


i love you (ain't that the worst thing you've ever heard?)

by AlwaysKatie7



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: AU Catching Fire, Canon Implied Child Abuse, Canon Typical Violence, F/M, Forced Prostitution, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of Angst, Multi, a bit of gale/katniss stuff on the side but only at the beginning, it is no more uplifting or cheerful than the actual catching fire, snow is an evil twisted man but you already knew that, this won't be especially graphic but its M because of the themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysKatie7/pseuds/AlwaysKatie7
Summary: On the Victory Tour, Katniss manages to do exactly what Snow asked of her: She convinces him of her love for Peeta, even before she's fully come to realize it herself, and in doing so slows the onslaught of rebellion. Any relief that might have come from this is short lived, however, as Katniss and Peeta learn what awaits desirable Victors of the Hunger Games. Consumed by her anger at the Capital, her trauma from the arena, and the horrors of the life of prostitution that awaits her, Katniss begins to rely on Peeta in ways she had never imagined. At the time, she doesn't know that what saved her on the Victory Tour also has the power to break her. But Snow knows this, and he plans to use it against her. He plans to use it to win.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 39
Kudos: 137





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> During the quarantine I re-read the entire trilogy, rewatched all four movies, and bought and read Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. So I guess you could say I basically morphed into my 14-year old Hunger Games-obsessed self again. This led me to getting 53k words deep into this alternative Catching Fire fic. I've been waiting to post until I was a decent ways into it, so that hopefully (no promises...unlike when I was 14, I have a full time job now) there will be semi-regular updates. Currently I have the first 12 chapters written. 
> 
> Title is taken from the song Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift, because who am I if I don't steal all my fanfiction titles directly from great songs? 
> 
> Warnings: this story deals with forced prostitution, child abuse, PTSD, and generally traumatic situations. I am not expecting the sex nor the violence to be especially graphic, but if anything is particularly dark or explicit I will be sure to post additional warnings at the start of the chapter in question. As a much less serious warning, please ignore the spots in this when the timeline doesn't directly align with canon. If you watch the movies and read the books simultaneously, they do tend to blur together.

“What the _fuck_ Haymitch?” Katniss snarls, storming into the train car where her supposed ‘mentor’ has fallen asleep, curled up in one of the ultra-plush, high-backed scarlet armchairs. The room is strewn with discarded bottles and crumpled napkins, and in the center he sits, still wearing the suit Effie had practically manhandled him into for the party, with a nearly empty bottle of capital-grade brandy cradled at his chest like a beloved child. Katniss is just grabbing the still-full pitcher of ice water from the bar cart, with the intention of chucking it over his head, when the man awakens, jolting from his slumber at the sound of her shouting, his eyes blinking rapidly to adjust to the image before him. Katniss looks practically manic: her dark hair shooting out in every direction from the fancy up-do her prep-team had spent hours crafting to carefully contain it, and the dainty little heels Cinna had chosen to go with her gown dangling from one hand by broken straps, so that she stands barefoot and fuming in a gorgeous gown of pearly luminescence, looking every bit the fighter who made it out of The Hunger Games alive. There is even that familiar fire in her eyes. If she had had her bow on her, he might be dead already. Haymitch’s face breaks into a smile.

“Good evening to you, too, sweetheart. Did you enjoy the party?” he quips. It was the final night of the Victory Tour, and the capital’s extravagant congratulatory event was an all-night affair. It must be very late by now. He tries to strain his neck far enough to see past Katniss to the clock on the far wall, but to no avail. Katniss blocks it completely, her mouth opening and closing in a rather amusing pantomime of fury.

From the next car over, the sound of footsteps grows louder, until an anxious, high-pitched voice—undoubtedly Effie’s—chirps out “Katniss?” and the escort herself springs into the room, looking as if she has just run the length of the Capital in Katniss’ pursuit. She probably has, Haymitch thinks, chuckling a little to himself at the thought. Like Katniss, Effie’s still dressed to the nines in her party-fare, but unlike Katniss, _she’s_ chosen to keep her shoes on. They’re four-inch, bright neon green pumps, and it’s no wonder that it’s taken her so long to get here with those things weighing her down. Behind her comes, predictably, Peeta, who’s struggling a little to keep up with even her pace, given his new leg.

“So, the whole gang’s here.” Haymitch remarks dryly as the boy slams the door closed behind him, leaning heavily on the one good leg left to him, “What’s the occasion?”

“They know,” Effie responds softly, looking quite upset, but still taking the opportunity to readjust her askew wig. Effie has always been incredibly easy to read, and her frantic eyes leave no question over what she is referring to. Haymitch slumps back in his chair and takes another drawn-out dreg from his brandy bottle. _Oh._ That.

“You-you—” Katniss sputters, waving her shoes angrily before her as she speaks, “How _could_ you? You didn’t even think to _tell_ us… _warn_ us….” None of these sentences are complete, but they are all laced with an unmistakable venom.

“Who told them?” he asks conversationally, directing the question at Effie as if Katniss is merely a buzzing noise in the background. The girl’s face grows impossibly redder beneath her makeup.

It's Peeta who answers, before Effie has the chance: “Finnick Odair.” He, too, sounds angry. _Naturally._ Haymitch isn’t sure he can take the venom from both of them at one time. “—And then Effie confirmed it.”

“Only because they’d already figured it out!” Effie interjects quickly, looking at Haymitch in exasperation, as if this clarification makes all the difference.

From her corner, Katniss only snarls, her mouth still opening and closely stupidly as she tries to find the right words with which to condemn the lot of them. They had _known_. They had known all along and they hadn’t told her. She wants to scream. She wants to cry, or fight, or do _something_. Instead, realizing that she is still holding Cinna’s fancy shoes, she settles for flinging them as hard as she can toward the wall, where the broken heels make a loud thump as they hit their mark and then slide to the floor, pooling pathetically in the lush carpet. At the noise, three heads snap up to look at her. But only Peeta meets her eyes.

The truth had been building up all evening, so that when the ball finally dropped, it seemed almost obvious, as though she’d known it, really, all along. That didn’t make the confirmation of it any less upsetting.

The party was a nightmare from start to finish. They arrived, as expected, promptly at 6 o’clock, to a four-course dinner hosted by President Snow, followed by an excruciating evening of dance and mingling. His mandatory appearance fulfilled, Haymitch had slipped away soon after the dessert course. But her and Peeta weren’t permitted to just _slip away_ from a party being held in their honor. No, trailed by Effie, they had been forced to endure their first full night of Capital society—surrounded by former Victors and Capital elites who seemed either disgusted by them or intoxicated by them, and sometimes a little of both.

The only former Victor Katniss had ever met was Haymitch, and none of the people at this party were like Haymitch. Most were former Careers, people who had won their games by coming up with innovative ways to kill as many people as possible, fast. Between the both of them, she and Peeta were able to recognize a few, but many of the Victors had won so many years ago, and been so ingratiated into Capital society since, that they were difficult to pick out from amongst the crowd. Personally, Katniss would have been fine with never meeting any of them, but Effie insisted on parading the pair of them around like trophies to meet each of the other winners individually. She whispered the Victors’ names and the Games they had won before making the introductions, so that Katniss and Peeta could pretend to know whose hands they were shaking. It was in this manner that they’d met Finnick, the charming, young victor of the 65th Hunger Games.

Tall, lithe, gorgeous: Finnick was one of the few whom Katniss recognized without having to be told. After a long line of anonymous former Victors, Finnick Odair was unmistakable. She didn’t remember much about his time in the arena; there were the only vague details, now common knowledge even to people like herself, who barely paid attention—stuff like his weapon of choice being a trident, and the fact that he was especially adept in the water, which had allowed him to survive in part by luring the older, bigger Careers to the water, where the advantage then shifted from them to him. But mostly, Katniss remembered him from the interviews. Post victory, Finnick had become a staple figure in every Hunger Games since. Caesar Flickerman was always dragging him onscreen before and during each new Games, to ask him his opinions on who had the best chances, and to give him an opportunity to hype up that year’s District 4 tributes. She could distinctly remember Gale calling him out for a sellout as they sat watching the screens in the square the year before Prim was reaped. _He’s one of Snow’s puppets now, just look at him. It’s like he was born in the Capital._ Gale’s voice had been thick with disgust.

There might be truth in it, too, Katniss thought, carefully assessing the real-life Finnick that now stood before her. He seemed to blend right in with the Capital aristocrats around him. Indeed, dressed in a striking suit of deep purple velvet, with a small, golden trident pin fixed to the lapel and a matching purple streak in his hair, Finnick looked like he _belonged_ there. He was surrounded by a gaggle of eccentric Capital girls, and appeared every bit the magnetic playboy.

“Katniss, Peeta, this is the _legendary_ Finnick Odair,” Effie began excitedly, after elbowing her way through all the wooing women to catch the man at the center’s gaze. “Finnick, may I introduce you to…my Victors!”

Finnick smirked, rolling something around in his mouth. “Katniss Everdeen. Peeta Mellark.” Their names rolled off his tongue with relish, sounding strangely foreign in his voice. He leaned in close, and whispered just loudly enough for them to hear, “Nice trick with the berries.” His face broke into a grin, and Katniss glanced at Peeta nervously. She was glad to see that he looked just as apprehensive as she felt. Next to them, Effie stared expectantly until Peeta, at last, extended a hand.

“Nice to meet you, Finnick,” he said dutifully. Finnick shook his hand, then looked at her so intently that she was forced to hastily extend her own.

“You two lovers have caused quite the stir here in the Capital,” Finnick continued, speaking as if he were in on a secret. Katniss had the haunting suspicion that he not only knew, but had known all along, that her and Peeta’s great love affair was nothing but a charade. “I expect you’ll be all the rage once they’ve put you on the circuit.”

Before Katniss had the chance to ask what that meant, she and Peeta were being whisked away by Effie, on to the next Victor and then the next. Katniss allowed herself to be steered around and spoken for, letting Effie do the introductions and Peeta all the talking, so that most of it passed in a mindless blur—until it didn’t.

The games eventually caught up to her. They always did.

It started with Cashmere and Gloss. Sitting in a corner, at the end of a long string of partygoers lining up to introduce themselves, were the famed siblings from District 1, a sister and brother duo built like gods, who’d won their games back to back, both by brute force, and been proudly flaunted by their district ever since. Effie pushed her and Peeta through the rest of the line and straight to the front, and boldly introduced them as this year’s victors, but Gloss and Cashmere offered only curt nods before turning to the man in line behind them. As they walked away, Effie loudly denounced the pair’s rudeness, “ _never have I_ seen _such sore losers,”_ but Katniss was so distracted that she barely heard her. Looking at Cashmere, even from a distance—all curves, with glossy, long blonde hair and striking blue eyes—had suddenly reminded her of Glimmer, and thoughts of Glimmer alive only ever led to thoughts of Glimmer dead, her face morphed to twice its normal size and her own piercing indigo eyes frozen like ice.

Katniss tried desperately to pull her thoughts away from this image, but then Effie was introducing them to a middle-aged, dark-skinned man named Chaff, whom Katniss knew to be from District 11, and she only saw Rue. “District 11,” Chaff confirmed, mischief in his eyes. “It’s an honor to meet you. It’s about time someone else from 12 won, if only to keep our dear friend Haymitch in line.” He raised his glass to the air in ode to his old friend, who was undoubtedly drinking on the train as they spoke. Katniss heard Peeta make some sort of answer, but she couldn’t have repeated a word of it.

She was thinking of little Rue’s face—so gentle in life, and peaceful in death. The way that her bright eyes had crinkled when she smiled, teasing her about Peeta, teaching her the mockingjay song. The innocence of a child who was somehow still able to smile even when surrounded by endless death. And Katniss had smiled back, maybe the only time she’d smiled for the duration of the Games…. She felt the room swirling around her, threatening to engulf her. The giant ballroom suddenly felt two feet wide.

“I was Rue’s mentor, and Thresh’s,” Chaff continued gently, his tone shifting as if he could see into her thoughts. “They were good kids. And the girl…she was so young.” His face grew suddenly somber, and he downed the rest of his drink in one gulp. Katniss could see why he and Haymitch were friends. “Districts 11 and 12 were allies in these Games,” he said at last, after a long pause, “and I hope we will remain so outside of it. Excuse me.” He was gone at once, and Effie in turn led the two of them off in some other direction. Katniss still couldn’t get Rue out of her head.

“I don’t think I can do this,” she whispered to Peeta, his weighted presence like a buoy beside her, the only thing there to pull her back towards the shore once she’d floated away. _You’re not in the arena anymore_ , she repeated to herself frantically, _you’re not there. You’re not._

No sooner had she said it then Peeta was taking her hand and pulling her away. “Katniss and I need to refresh our drinks, Effie,” he improvised, holding up his empty champagne glass, as though to prove to her that he was telling the truth. They were gone before their escort could respond, weaving their way through the thick crowd. He pulled her over towards a corner, where the light didn’t quite reach and they could somewhat hide from the blinding glare of the Capital.

“That’s got to be nearly all of them,” he said quietly, undoubtedly talking about the victors. “Effie must have introduced us to over a dozen by now.” Something in his voice made Katniss really look at him for the first time all evening. He looked exhausted. Portia had dressed him in a pearly white suit that perfectly matched the shimmery evening gown Cinna had sewn for her, and his prep team had put a thick coat of makeup over his pale skin. Silver eyeliner was swirled on his lower lash line. Even so, there were noticeable bags under Peeta’s eyes, and Katniss could tell, by the way he immediately slumped, ever so slightly, against the wall they’d reached, that his prosthetic leg was bothering him tonight.

“It’s not the victors,” she admitted. “Well, it _is_ , but… It’s more like, when I see them, I can’t stop thinking about everyone else. All those other tributes in that arena.” _And everyone dead but us._

“I’ve been thinking about them too,” Peeta confessed.

“Rue should be here today, not me. It isn’t right.”

“Don’t think like that.” But before Peeta could say more, their little moment of respite was brought to an abrupt end. They were caught out, by a woman wearing a giant blue bow on her head, whose skin was carefully painted with distinctive purple and green scales that glistened when she moved. “ _There_ they are!” the woman exclaimed, pulling them back into the limelight. She introduced herself quickly, and Katniss made no effort to try and remember her name. “It’s such a _pleasure_ to meet you,” the woman continued, punctuating every third word, “I’m so truly _charmed_. Oh how _thrilled_ my husband will be to hear! We were big fans, big fans, as I’m sure you can imagine! We’re so proud to say we contributed to this year’s victors—and ones so delightful as the two of you!” _A sponsor,_ Katniss thought miserably _._ They probably owed their lives to this woman, who had helped to supply them with medicine and water and survival. It made her want to vomit. As if to further the sensation, the mermaid-woman reached forward and pinched Peeta’s cheek, and even her boy with the bread, who somehow always managed to stay composed when the moment required it, couldn’t help but recoil at the touch. Katniss moved slightly in front of him so there would be no chance of their “fan” repeating the action. Still, the woman was relentless, plowing forward without their prompting, “Oh, Villiam, my husband, can’t _wait_ to get his hands on one of you, or perhaps both!” Her giggle alone was nauseating, “Any idea when you two will be made available?”

“Sorry?” said Peeta, but by then word had spread of their reappearance, and Effie came rushing towards them, snatching them away from the woman and hissing in her most irritated voice, “Just _where_ have you two been?”

Katniss looked back at the woman with the scales as they were being pulled away. The lady was still eyeing them hungrily, and gave Katniss a wink before Peeta grabbed her hand and forced her back around.

“Katniss,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice, which was laced with barely concealed panic, low enough so that Effie could not hear, “Earlier, with Finnick. That comment about being on the ‘circuit’…what do you think that means?”

“It was Finnick Odair, Peeta, he was probably just trying to mess with us.”

“I don’t think so. First Finnick, now that sponsor. ‘ _When will you two be available?’_ There’s something going on here. Something they’re not telling us. What exactly did Snow say to you earlier?”

Katniss thought back, to the terrible smell of roses pervading the air, and the worst five minutes of the evening, by far. Snow had given a short, performative speech about them to the crowd before dinner, and they'd had to stand at his side. “Threats, what else?” she whispered back, scanning the room to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “It was nothing new.” She could still remember the smell of blood on the old man’s lips as he’d leaned in to shake her hand, and whispered nauseatingly into her ear.

"Well, he told me that now that we’ve worked against one another, he ‘looks forward to working together in the future.’ What do you suppose that means?”

Katniss pushed aside the foreboding feeling rising in her stomach. Certainly nothing good. “I don’t know, Peeta,” she said instead, exasperated. “It was probably about keeping up the act.” She thought back to the President’s visit to her home in District 12, before they’d left on the tour. “He wants to make sure we sell the story so that everyone believes it. The Capital _and_ the Districts. That’s all we need to focus on.” She couldn’t mention the rebellions, or the strictness of the new Peacekeepers, or the consequences of their potential failure, but these things dangled, unspoken, between them nevertheless.

“There’s something _else_ , Katniss. I know there is. Why do you think all these victors are still here? The Games ended months ago. We went home, why didn’t they?”

“Maybe they did. Maybe Snow just invited them back for the party. Anyway, I think Finnick lives here….” Even as she said it something felt off. She remembered seeing many of the Victors on capital TV in the intervening weeks she’d spent holed up in District 12’s Victor’s Village. Finnick had appeared each time with a different woman on his arm, never the same one twice.

“Or maybe he’s _made_ them stay,” Peeta whispered back.

They didn’t have a chance to speak again until Effie released them from her talons to send them off dancing. And it was Katniss who ultimately asked, once they’d switched partners and she found herself face to face, once again, with Finnick Odair, what her and Peeta had already come to suspect. “What exactly is it that you _do_ , Finnick, here in the Capital?” She said it almost calmly, as soon as he’d spun her away from Peeta, who was now dancing with Cashmere, who seemed slightly less sour than before. 

The trademark grin slipped off Finnick’s face, but only for a moment. “They didn’t tell you?” he muttered quietly. Katniss gave a nearly imperceptible shake of her head. There was a heavy pause, though not a long one. Then, in his usual cadence, “I offer the people of the Capital the pleasure of my company. I provide them with…a service…and in exchange they become more _financially_ invested in our President and his dear old Games. It’s a worthwhile exchange…depending on who you ask.” The words came out evenly, but Katniss could hear the anger lurking behind each and every one of them. He made a meaningful glance towards President Snow’s empty chair at the high table.

Oh. _Oh._ Her head was spinning, and she found that all she wanted to do was get back to Peeta, to tell him, to warn him. But no, this couldn’t be right. Finnick had always been a bit of a playboy. That was his reputation in District 12. Finnick, the Capital sellout. It wasn’t, it couldn’t be….

“Don’t look too surprised, Girl on Fire,” said Finnick, piercing through her thoughts like a sharp needle catching fabric. “You can’t have thought it was all over?”

She hadn’t, not really. But when she’d thought of how Snow could control her, she’d imagined marriage and children and television cameras, all the things she’d never wanted. A life with Peeta forced upon her by the President, yes, but never _this_. Finnick, like Chaff before him, seemed disturbingly able to gauge her thoughts. “You may yet find that our worthy leader is not in need of your services.” If this was meant to reassure her, it did a very poor job of it, especially when he continued, “But I wouldn’t count on it. You and your boyfriend are on fire right now here in the Capital—metaphorically this time, of course.” His eyes twinkled. “If I were you, I would start to prepare.” He spun her over to switch partners once again, and then she was dancing with Gloss, who barely met her eyes and didn’t attempt to say a word to her until the song was over. Even then it was only “goodbye.” This worked fine by her. 

After that, she had fled at the first opportunity, with just a whisper of the truth to Peeta. Effie tried to stop her, but Katniss was already gone, dashing out of the building and into the designated car meant to take them back to the train once the party had ended. She tore off her shoes as soon as she’d sat down, tugging so hard that the straps broke, yet too distracted to even worry if Cinna would be upset. It was both impossible to believe and impossible to not have seen coming. It made _sense_ , really, once she knew…. All those victors on TV, and she had always believed they wanted to stay in the Capital. That Finnick had _enjoyed_ all those Capital women, and sometimes men. _Snow’s puppet,_ Gale had said. It all seemed incredibly naïve, now. _Of course, of course, of course._

As soon as the car dropped her off at the train and she’d stormed back onboard, Katniss had bee-lined her way to Haymitch, and found him here, as expected, drinking himself to death in the dining car.

“There’s been no confirmation, yet,” Effie insists, cutting through her thoughts. She’s glaring daggers at Katniss now, probably for her behavior with the shoes. “None at all. Perhaps—”

But Haymitch interrupts with “let it go, Effie,” and the woman is silenced. “There hasn’t been an order…yet. There will be. It’s about time they know what they’re in for.”

“This is ludicrous,” says Peeta from the corner. “They can’t seriously expect us to _agree_ —”

“Agree?” Haymitch lets out a bark of laughter. He seems more drunk, if possible, than usual. “ _Agree!_ You don’t agree, boy. You do what they want you to do, or you don’t do it, and you’ll pay a price either way. The choice is up to you, but between the options I don’t think it will take either one of you very long to decide which route to go.”

“But what if we do say ‘no,’” Katniss presses, trying not to sound too frantic. Her mind is swimming with Finnick’s half-words. The metallic taste of blood fills her mouth, and she realizes she’s bitten into her tongue. “ _If_ we refuse…what happens then?” It isn’t like she doesn’t know, by this point. Still, it feels necessary to have him confirm it. As if the reality, from his lips, might be enough to force her to do what needs doing. 

But Haymitch only says, “I don’t suggest you find out, sweetheart.”

 _Prim,_ Katniss thinks, her sister’s shiny face swimming into the forefront of her vision. She’d do anything to keep that face unmarred and smiling, even this. It's not even a question. 

“But what about the ‘star-crossed lovers?’” says Peeta sharply. “How can they have us do… _that_ if they want everyone to think Katniss and I are in love?” There is none of the usual emotion in Peeta’s voice. It is purely analytical, as if he is genuinely trying to piece together all the ragged edges of whatever warped puzzle the Capital has created for them. Katniss swallows the lump in her throat. 

Haymitch doesn’t answer immediately, and the room is so silent that Katniss can hear his fingers drumming against his bottle. Then he says, “How about some music?”

“ _What?”_ Peeta says, the emotion coming back blazing, but Haymitch is already up, fiddling with the record player in the corner of the room until he’s turned some concert pianist on at full volume. Then he walks between the pair of them and leans in, so close that Katniss can smell the alcohol on his breath.

“ _Listen_ boy _,_ you two aren’t just Victors anymore, you’re commodities. And as long as Snow can profit off of you, he’s going to do everything in his power to keep selling you. Your great love story helped you in the Games, but now it's only extra fuel for the Capital vultures. The Districts might be satisfied with watching it play out from afar, but there are people here who will want to see it up close and personal. People who will take _pleasure_ in swimming around in it. And it’s _those_ people who have the means to pay for their preferred entertainment.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us?” Katniss snaps, and Haymitch turns toward her furiously. She isn’t even trying to keep her voice down. Damn them both, he thinks. The pair of them can’t even pick up on the _simplest_ hints….

“When exactly would have been a good time to mention it, sweetheart?” Haymitch growls, “Before the games, to motivate you into staying alive? After you’d gone home to your families, so that it could haunt you for some of the few weeks you’ll get to see them, maybe all year? I’m dying to know, what exactly would you have done differently, had I told you?

Before Katniss can answer, Peeta does. “I’d have eaten the damn berries,” he says stoically. Then he turns around and leaves, practically dragging his bad leg behind him.

Haymitch shuts his eyes and downs the remainder of his glass in one go. It doesn’t feel like enough. Katniss is still staring down at him, her face stony, demanding answers, or maybe an apology. No one can claim she isn’t annoyingly persistent, that’s for sure. All he says is, “And start thinking about what you say around here,” gesturing towards the music player with a limp hand. “You’re going to get all of us killed.”

The piano music blares in her ears.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Juneteenth! 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left a comment or kudos on this story after chapter one. Also thanks to those of you who mentioned that it was improperly categorized...this story is definitely not complete and it will be multi-chapter. Sorry for any confusion.

The night they find out is the first night in weeks that she and Peeta don’t sleep side by side, and the absence of the weight of his body beside her gnaws at her like a parasite, keeping her awake with unbidden thoughts. After finally leaving Haymitch in the dining car to drown himself in his liquor, she’d paused outside Peeta’s room on the way back to her own, lingering outside his door and debating whether or not to go in. That was when she’d heard the crying, so soft it was almost indistinguishable behind the heavy door. Still, it should have been enough to get her to run in and comfort him, like he had done every single time she was the one in tears, late at night, after a rough day on Tour. But she had only turned away and slunk back to her own bunk. And spent every waking moment since thinking about him crying alone behind his locked door.

_I’d have eaten the damn berries._

The words send a chill through her entire body, but how can she blame him? This was…this was… _twisted_ doesn’t seem quite to cut it. Wicked? Evil? There isn’t a word strong enough in the English language to describe the Capitol, or its demonic president. Fuck them all.

Somehow Katniss can’t seem to cry, herself. It is as though her fury has superseded her sorrow, and simmering in this anger is enough to keep any tears from spilling over. The only thing she can be absolutely certain of at the moment is that she hates the Capitol with every fiber of her being. It is all-consuming, this hatred, blocking out any other thoughts but those of their lies and their power and their crimes. 

All of the miners who slave away, day after day, in the darkness and soot beneath Twelve, dying with the dust of it coated in their lungs….

All of the mothers with too many mouths to feed, sobbing at the coffins that bring home what is left of their children from the Capitol—Only the pieces, only the bones….

The peacekeepers. The tesserae. Never enough work and never enough money and never enough food. Never _enough._

_Victors who are prostituted out in the Capitol for cheap favors._

She stands up and rushes to the bathroom to vomit. But she still refuses to cry.

* * *

The next morning, Peeta doesn’t show up for breakfast, and Haymitch is only there by default, having never left the armchair in the dining car he’d fallen asleep in last night, still clutching the near-empty bottle of brandy in one hand. When the man woke to Katniss, Effie, and a nauseatingly full buffet of eggs and cheeses and breads and fruits, he’d dumped a liberal amount of what was left of the alcohol into a cup of coffee and downed half of it in one sip. Effie has pretended not to notice any of these details, and instead has spent the entire meal attempting to engross Katniss in a riveting conversation about the _schedule_.

The Victory Tour, at last, is nearing its end. They are on their way home. _For now, at least,_ Katniss thinks bitterly, stabbing at her deviled egg. It seems like a small consolation, knowing what she now knows. She only nods as Effie prattles on about their timetable, thinking all the while of what Prim is doing back in Twelve. Probably eating breakfast right now, too, while eagerly awaiting the arrival of the train. She can picture it vividly, her mother spooning more eggs onto Prim’s plate, and Prim’s voice, impatient, the eggs forgotten, _“When does Katniss get home?”_

What is Katniss supposed to tell her sister when she has to leave again?

“I might not see you again until Reaping Day!” Effie is now saying, seemingly not noticing when Katniss recoils at the word alone: _Reaping_. It hangs heavy and gray in the air, like the storm cloud of an impending tornado. Taunting her. “How strange is that?”

“Downright _bizarre_ ,” Haymitch mutters sarcastically, taking a miniscule bite out of his toast. They are his first words all breakfast. Effie chooses to ignore them.

“Well. _You_ might not miss _me_ ,” the woman continues, focusing her attention on Katniss instead, “But—I’ll miss you.” Katniss thinks she actually looks a little emotional, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of a silk handkerchief. But if she is, she snaps out of it just as quickly, and goes immediately back to reminding them that they will be back in Twelve promptly at 4 o’clock, and have you laid out your clothes for the ceremony yet, Katniss?

Katniss is just debating whether she can get away with going back to bed until their arrival at the station when Peeta trudges in at last, falling ungracefully into the only empty chair at the table and turning immediately towards Haymitch, ignoring breakfast. “I think Katniss and I should get married,” he announces, as calmly as if he’s just said “pass the butter.” Katniss almost chokes on her spoonful of egg. Haymitch only smirks.

_“Excuse me?”_ she sputters, looking at him as if he’s grown three extra heads. “You can’t be serious.”

"If it’s going to happen eventually…why not now?” He refuses to meet her eyes.

“It won’t help, boy,” Haymitch says carefully, sobering up a bit and sounding oddly serious, almost _concerned_. “Not in the way you think.”

“Well we have to do _something_ —”

Katniss, usually so in tune with at least Haymitch, feels as though they are speaking a different language altogether. “Were either of you planning to ask the bride’s opinion or are you just going to continue discussing my wedding like I’m not in the room?” she snaps in frustration. “Where the hell did this even come from, Peeta?”

“I just think,” says Peeta, his voice sounding insistent now, determined, “I think it’s important to show them you’re the only one for me. That we’re the only ones for each other.” His eyes finally meet hers, and they look a little crazed. _Pleading._

Suddenly she understands. Oh. _Oh._ “It won’t work,” she says immediately. And she knows she’s right. If Snow will sell them off now, he’ll have no problem doing it to them when they’re husband and wife. There is nothing that man won’t do, that she is certain of. Haymitch nods his agreement.

Then Peeta finally looks up at her. She allows herself a moment to ponder if his eyes are really still swollen from last night’s cry, or if she is only imagining it. He certainly looks like he hasn’t slept. She wishes they could just speak openly to one another, but Haymitch’s warning echoes like a dark omen in her mind. If Snow is listening….

“I think I’d like to be excused,” Katniss says carefully, pushing away her plate. Peeta narrows his eyes in confusion and frustration, but they follow her all the same as she stands and walks slowly and deliberately towards the door, her hand slyly lifting up to _just_ point in the direction of the rear car.

It doesn’t take long for him to find her there. She is leaning on the railing, enjoying the open air and passing the time waiting for him by watching the fields roll by in the distance. It is hard to tell for certain, but she thinks they might already be in Nine. Nearly home.

“You have to watch what you say inside,” she says in lieu of greeting. “Haymitch says they’re listening.” There’s no need to explain who “they” are.

“Yeah, I know. He just reminded me.”

“Oh.”

“Listen, Katniss, about what I said—”

“It wasn’t a _bad_ idea exactly,” she concedes, smiling a little, “getting married.” She says it only to be nice, because she can tell Haymitch has already said something to talk him out of it. _Good._

“It also wasn’t a good one.” He sighs. “Haymitch says it might only make us _more_ in-demand…that they could try to, I dunno, sell us off as a _couple_ …” His face wrinkles in disgust and anger, but the hatred that always comes so easily to her looks forced and unnatural on Peeta’s soft features. She can picture him now: tossing and turning throughout the night, trying to think of a way out of this—still, despite all that the world has thrown at him, holding onto hope that there is one. Clinging to notions that the Capital has long since held no regard for, those as simple and as fundamental as right versus wrong.

It breaks her heart.

She almost wants to hug him. 

She doesn’t.

Instead she says, “I nearly ran. Before we left Twelve.”

This gets his attention. “What?”

“Before the Victory Tour. I spent so long planning it all out, imagining it in my dreams. Gale and I could hunt, and I trust that you know how to gather berries now, ones that _won’t_ get us killed,” she grins a little at her poor attempt at a joke, though nothing about it is very funny, “And Prim’s old enough now, she could keep up. She could even help Hazelle out with little Posy. I had it all figured out. I’d convinced myself we’d make it.”

“So what stopped you?”

“Well, I told Gale, for starters,” she admits, thinking back to her best friend’s adamant refusal. She had been so angry in the moment, but he was right, of course. They wouldn’t have lasted even a day. “He, um, he didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“More like, he didn’t want to bring me along,” Peeta correctly deduces.

“I think it was more Haymitch that he had a problem with, actually,” Katniss says, the jest slipping easily off her tongue. “Didn’t think we’d be able to carry that much alcohol.”

“Oh, you were planning to bring Haymitch along too? No wonder Gale said no.”

Just like that, they’re laughing, imagining trying to cart Haymitch through the woods across the length of Panem. For whatever reason, in this image Effie is there too, sidestepping leaves on tip-toe in her four-inch neon heels, complaining endlessly about getting mud on the soles. It’s the first time she’s so much as cracked a smile in days.

“He was right, though, we wouldn’t have made it,” she says softly, growing serious again. Even keeping her eyes trained on the passing fields, she can feel the weight of Peeta’s gaze. It is much easier not to look at him sometimes. “I guess the list of people I care about has expanded. I’ll never be able to hide all of you away.”

* * *

Effie’s tight schedule, though endlessly irritating, proves accurate. They reach Twelve sharply at 4 PM, and are ushered onto the platform in the square to shake hands with Mayor Undersee by five. The best part about this is that she briefly gets to see Madge inside the Justice Building beforehand. Her friend greets her with much more enthusiasm than Katniss thinks she really deserves, but it’s nice just the same. Then she and Peeta are swept out in front of the District, leaving Madge behind, giving them a last thumbs-up. This ceremony will bring a formal end to the Victory Tour, a conclusion that will be documented in its entirety for Capital TV. Then District 12 will get a feast tonight in celebration of the homecoming.

On stage, going through the performative motions is somehow both harder and easier here in Twelve than it has been in the rest of Panem. On the one hand, recognizing every face in the crowd makes it endlessly worse. Katniss feels eerily conscious of what all of them must be thinking. Under Effie’s gaze, she dutifully clutches Peeta’s hand and leaves no space between them throughout the ceremony, but all the while she can feel the eyes of the Hob on her, peeling off her fancy Capital clothes and revealing the cold, brittle bones underneath. At the front of the crowd are Prim and her mother, smiling and waving at her, with the Hawthorne family not far behind them. But Gale looks surly, as he always does now when she is with Peeta, putting on their act, and even Prim’s smile appears strained, almost anxious. As Katniss turns to Peeta and kisses him, it is with the full knowledge that everyone watching knows it is a fraud; Here, they are convincing no one.

Still, their winning means something at home that it hasn’t in the other districts: food. As the mayor speaks, and then Effie, the children of the Seam shuffle restlessly, anxiously awaiting the end of the speeches, when they will be allowed to finally eat their first real meal in months. Grain that for once won’t be tesserae grain. Meat that is something other than the lean scraps sold for a day’s wages at the Hob and served in clumsy stews to children across the Seam. Somehow these children look thinner and grubbier than Katniss has remembered. Or perhaps it only seems this way, because just yesterday she had been surrounded by Capital children, all of whom wore the bright and puffy faces of those who aren’t starving, who are allowed not only to survive but to live and thrive in a society that always caters to them.

When it is her turn to speak, Katniss reads off Effie’s now familiar prepared speech at breakneck speed, hoping to hasten along the food. This is helped by there being no condolences, for once, to give. District 12’s tributes— _them_ —are the ones who’ve survived, and all of Twelve will, if for only a few hours, reap the benefits of this new and surprising reality. This is what makes it easier to breathe, here, than it has been in every other district: tonight, the children and adults both will not go to sleep hungry. Peeta seems to take her hint and reads his portion of the speech fast, too.

Finally, the cameras are shut off, and only then is she able to drop Peeta’s hand and wipe her sweaty palms on one leg of her bellbottom pants. Katniss wastes no time slipping into the crowd, looking around for the streak of clean blonde hair and crisp blue wool that marks her sister. Prim stands out now amongst the other kids. Her facial features have always looked more Merchant than Seam, but now it is as if her entire body has at last decided to catch up to the look of her. With just a few months of constant meals, thin and gangly and dirt-streaked has given way to rounded cheeks and flushed skin. It doesn’t take Katniss long to find her amongst the more coal-dusted, shivering children. She hurries immediately in her sister’s direction.

Luckily, no one is paying attention to her anymore. They probably hadn’t been in the first place, though only now that the cameras have stopped rolling can they go about ignoring her openly. The additional Peacekeepers who have followed her and Peeta for the duration of the Victory Tour are now helping Darius and Cray pass out food, and the outstretched hands of District Twelve are eagerly snapping up the various offerings: cheese, produce, rice. Even the Hawthorne children, who stood by Prim throughout the ceremony, have now dispersed to snatch up their share. No one says a word as she weaves amongst them.

For the majority of her life, Katniss had assumed that Haymitch was ignored, and all but forgotten about in the intermittent months between the yearly reapings, because he was a drunkard and a fool, and he made people uncomfortable. Only recently has she begun to realize that it is Victors in general who make the people of Twelve uncomfortable—herself included. If anything, Haymitch’s drunkenness is an amusing sideshow, something to laugh at amongst themselves as a way to break up the mundaneness of most of the days here and the teeming tension of the annual Reaping Day. It is not his drinking, but his mere victory—not really so mere of a thing at all—that is instead the major object of their scorn. More specifically, it is what had been required of him in order to claim such a victory. In a way, the entire district is collectively afraid of drunk, old Haymitch Abernathy. These people who have looked themselves in the mirror on the morning of each reaping and in the cold of the long evenings that followed, after the daily footage of the Games has been switched off for the night, and told themselves again and again that _they_ would never do the things that he had done to survive, that they would rather die than kill, that they would not allow themselves to be made into murderers. They told it to themselves until they were convinced of the truth of it, and for most of them this conviction never had to be tested. So now they are afraid of her, too. Probably even Peeta. Maybe _especially_ Peeta—who, alive and breathing and damaged, can stare back at them and break wide open their faulty faith in their own, exceptional righteousness. If Peeta can kill, they can too.

No. No one says a word as she weaves amongst them. No one so much as spares her a glance.

At last she reaches Prim and falls to her knees, and the little-but-not-so-little girl’s arms immediately snake around her, and Katniss melts into the touch. _Home_. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding as she takes in the strawberry smell of Prim's shampoo.

“Welcome back,” her mother says from above them, smiling.

“I’ve missed you,” Prim whispers.

“I’ve missed you too, little duck. _So_ much.”

“Catnip,” says Gale, giving her a nod. At his voice, Katniss stands up and flings her arms around him, too, taken aback by the rare burst of emotion sweeping over her. For the length of the Tour, she hadn’t allowed herself to think about how much she missed them all. Now that they all stand in front of her, it is as though every emotion she’s shouldered aside in the past month comes roaring back to life again all at once. Gale seems taken aback, but pleased, and Katniss immediately steps back in embarrassment, feeling herself growing red.

“Well,” she says, straightening up and forcing herself to get a grip, “Should we head back?”

“You’re not going to stay for the feast?” Gale looks disappointed. She can sense that he wants to talk to her, but that he doesn’t want to leave his family. Rory and Vick choose that moment to come bounding towards them with their hands overflowing with goodies. “Hey Katniss,” the boys echo. Katniss feels Prim press against her at her side, suddenly shy. Apparently she’s developed a new crush in her absence. Katniss grins.

“We’ll talk tomorrow. Usual place, usual time?”

Gale nods.

“C’mon, Prim,” Katniss says, tugging her sister along towards the Victor’s Village. As they walk, she doesn’t remove her arm from around the younger girl’s shoulders.

Their mother follows briskly behind them as they break away from the crowds and veer in the direction of home. “How was it then?” she prompts once they are a far enough distance away.

Prim looks up expectantly, and Katniss swallows. What is she supposed to tell them? _“Oh, it was grand. First I met the parents of all the dead children I’ve killed and then I found out I get to work as a prostitute in the Capitol!”_ She settles for a blunt, clipped “fine.”

It isn’t until they’ve rounded the corner to the stone path that leads onwards toward the Victor’s Village that they see him. Quite a bit ahead, walking alone down the path to his house with his head bent down looking at the gravel, is Peeta. He clearly wasted no time in starting back. Katniss nearly stills in surprise. Even Haymitch had temporarily stayed behind in the square, probably for the free beer. Shouldn’t Peeta be with his family? She tries to recall their faces in the crowd, but she hadn’t exactly been looking for them, and now can’t remember one way or the other.

“Peeta!” Prim calls out, untangling herself from Katniss. She waves at him when he stops and turns, and Peeta waves back, grinning at her. Katniss can visibly see Prim doubling her stride to catch up to him. Maybe she has a crush on Peeta, too, she thinks jokingly. Her sister reaches Peeta before she and their mother do, but in the end all three of them fall into step beside him, her mother making small talk about Twelve’s latest happenings. The weather’s been less brutal in the last few days, now that the snow has waned, the butcher is investing in a new store front, Posy Hawthorne has learned five new words.

“I missed your cheese buns,” Prim interjects cheerfully, “And your bagels. The ones with the cinnamon.” Peeta smiles and tells her he’ll make her some of each tomorrow.

“ _Prim_ ,” Katniss chides, but her sister just shrugs and mouths _what?_ Katniss rolls her eyes.

“You don’t have to,” she tells Peeta over Prim’s head, secretly hoping he’ll do it anyway. She’s missed the cheese buns, too, frankly.

“It’s no problem. But I wasn’t able to bake on the train, obviously, so no promises on whether they’ll be up to snuff,” he warns. “I’m a bit out of practice.”

Prim cheers her victory, and even Katniss can’t hold back a little smile. She knows this warning holds no merit. Peeta could go a year without baking and still manage to make the best cheese buns in the world, and she tells him so. Prim and her mother nod readily in agreement.

“We had to go to the real bakery while you were away,” Prim prattles on, “But it wasn’t as good, and your Mom is kind of mean, isn’t she?” Peeta visibly tenses.

“That’s enough, Primrose.” It comes from their mother, this time, who eyes Peeta wearily. “C’mon dear, let’s go on ahead.” Prim starts to protest, but her mother pulls her along, leaving Katniss and Peeta to trudge on behind them.

“I’m sorry about her,” Katniss says immediately. “She’s a little over-excited, clearly.”

“Nothing to apologize for. I can only imagine what my mother might have said to her…” He is staring resolutely down at his feet, and it is so far removed from the confident Peeta she’s used to that Katniss flinches. He seems to suddenly have gone somewhere else, far away inside his head. She is no stranger to that feeling.

“Peeta,” she ventures slowly, debating momentarily whether or not to push this. She has no right to, she reminds herself. Peeta and her were barely on speaking terms before the Tour, and now…. Well, now they are closer than they’ve been since the games, undoubtedly…but resolutely still on thin ice. She doesn’t want to ruin things now that they’re finally friends. _Still_. “Why aren’t you with your family in the square? Don’t you want to say hi to them?” There, she’s said it.

His head snaps back up, and the change is almost instantaneous. His momentary reclusiveness is wiped away, replaced with his familiar, steady self. “They had to leave right away, to prepare the bakery for tomorrow. I’ll catch up with them later.” He says it casually, and shoots her a winning smile. But she’s put on the act with him long enough now to tell when he’s faking.

It is no secret in Twelve that Mrs. Mellark is a rough sort of woman. Katniss can remember her own mother whispering about the baker’s angry wife to her father, in the days when he was still alive. They had sometimes had a little extra money then, even on her father’s meager wages, to buy her and Prim the occasional cookie on a holiday, or a half of a loaf of the cheaper, day old bread to eat with their evening stew. Every time their mother ventured into town to buy these goodies, she came home complaining, often about her encounters with her own family, at the apothecary, but nearly as frequently about Mrs. Mellark, who was never pleasant, and who always made nasty comments about one thing or another, and who sometimes even tried to withhold change—or so her mother claimed. She wasn’t the only one, either. There were rumors, even in the Seam, about the baker’s nasty wife, and about how she treated her family. Her sons.

Katniss can still hear the sound of the slap, the sharp intake of pained breath, right before Peeta emerged with the bread that saved her life.

They are silent for the rest of the trip and when they reach the fountain in between their houses, Peeta veers right, and she left. Katniss waves him goodbye, but can’t help but wonder how long it will be before they’ll speak again. It’s different between them when they’re home, it just is. Things don’t seem to come as easily as when they’re left to their own devices in the midst of immediately life-threatening situations. 

Inside, her suitcases from the train have already been delivered and left for her in the foyer, a room which she quickly discovers she hasn’t missed. It’s too big, with a giant crystal chandelier that overwhelms anything that might actually make it feel like home. Her suitcases look dwarflike in a space so vast.

After a month stuck on tour with her, Katniss can practically hear Effie in her ear, telling her that she better unpack right away, lest her precious Capital wardrobe get wrinkled. Obediently, Katniss drags her bags up the winding staircase to the second floor and into her bedroom, which, like the foyer, is far too big and practically empty.

The room is furnished with the same furniture that is duplicated in every Victor’s house on the block—most of which sit uninhabited. There’s a cherry-toned dresser and matching wardrobe, and a queen size bed with a wrought iron headboard and crisp white linen sheets. Her mother has added a checkered green quilt, which is neatly folded at the foot of the bed. It is the only sign that the room is occupied. 

Katniss shoves the suitcase in a corner and quickly strips, shedding the cashmere sweater and gray, velvety slacks she was instructed to wear that morning and throwing them in the back of the wardrobe without bothering to put them on hangers. These clothes weren’t designed specially for her by Cinna, so she doesn’t even have to feel bad as she does it. She replaces them with one of her mother’s old nightgowns and overlays it with a thick woolen sweater that has yarn coming up on one end. Downstairs, her mother and sister are padding around, probably trying to cobble something together for dinner. They must have heard her come in, but they also must have realized she’s in no mood to continue catching up tonight. They leave her be, and she crawls into her too-big, lonely bed and draws the quilt around her tightly like a cocoon, to sleep off the weight of the Capitol.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Good News: Peeta's POV this chapter! Bad News: Katniss does not make an appearance. I know, I know. I forgot to tag this story as slow burn, so if you haven't realized that already take this as your warning: it's a slow burn. Oops.

He’s gotten used to falling asleep next to Katniss Everdeen. Aged 12 or 13 or 14, back when he would go to bed thinking of her, this girl he couldn’t take his eyes off of but yet couldn’t work up the courage to talk to, he’d replay the sound of her voice in his head, singing the Valley song, to mask the noise of his parents fighting downstairs. And he would have absolutely lost it if he’d been given this small preview into his future: _you will know what it is to have_ _Katniss Everdeen in your bed._ In that other life, the one in which he is still young and naïve and doesn’t know anything so fundamental as the Capitol’s tyranny or Katniss’ favorite color being green, this could only have seemed wondrous, a taste of the divine, or at the very least the makings of all his best dreams. In this reality, however, it feels more like sinking loneliness. He got too used to her too quickly, and now that she’s gone her absence is agony.

In fact, Peeta hasn’t seen Katniss for over a week now, ever since their walk home on the final night of the Victory Tour. At this point it’s impossible to pretend she isn’t ignoring him all over again. He thought something must have changed, after they’d spent weeks curled up against one another beneath the sheets, with only the thin fabric of their pajamas between them as they drifted off to sleep. But apparently that meant nothing, too.

It’s so hard to know what’s real and what’s not anymore, there’s too much getting jumbled around in his head. Lately he’s been going through the lists in his mind as he lies in bed late at night, wide awake without her, categorizing each moment into one column or the other; their latest kiss, on stage in front of all of Twelve—decidedly not real. The hand-holding and the dancing and their kneecaps touching as Caesar Flickerman pressured them for details on the _exact moment_ they’d fallen in love—none of that was real, either. But despite all of these theatrics, there have been quieter moments, too, haven’t there? He has to keep replaying them in his head to convince himself of their existence, but they are there, nevertheless. He clings to them almost frantically.

For one, there’s the way that his fingers brushed her cheek that night when she’d awoken crying from a nightmare, and the softness of her skin on his as he’d swept away the tears. She hadn’t pushed him away. The touch had been almost electric. Or the time they had watched the sunset from the back of the train, and her eyes had lingered on him like she was trying to soak him in, at least until he’d returned the gaze, and they’d quickly darted away again. There was also _that_ night, when Finnick had told her the truth about what was in store for them in the Capital, that last evening before their return home. Even before that bomb dropped, there had been a desperation in her at the party, in both of them, really, and her hand had actively sought his out, clinging to it tightly every time Effie introduced them to someone new. _Those_ things had all been real, hadn’t they? It feels like he used to know the answer, but now can’t say for certain one way or another. Sometimes these memories seem like nothing more than a mirage in an endlessly dry dessert, or like a foggy, drug-addled kiss in an arena cave, that you wake from fearing was only a dream. And it is infuriating.

She’s trying to cut him out again, like she’d done the first time they’d come home, right after their victory…trying to sever all ties. That much is obvious. It honestly makes him angry, this knowledge that it is so easy for her to toss him aside. What makes him angrier is that is all but impossible for him to forget her in return.

The morning after their latest arrival back home, he’d made good on his promise to bring Prim bagels and cheese buns. This meant getting up early to prepare the dough and bake them, and then personally delivering them to Katniss’ front door by breakfast, all in the hope of seeing her, and maybe convincing her to join him and Haymitch for dinner sometime. But Katniss wasn’t there. It had been Mrs. Everdeen who’d answered the door, and told him Katniss was with Gale in the woods. He’s been back to her house most mornings since to drop off more bread, and hasn’t encountered Katniss once. She is somehow always _on a walk_ or _gathering herbs_ or _on a hunt,_ which Peeta has since decided all roughly translate to _simply ignoring him_. It isn’t like she doesn’t know that he stops by every morning—the bread, after all, stays there as blatant evidence—but she without fail makes herself scarce every time he does so.

Even worse, she’s seemingly fallen right back into her old routine, and he is finding it quite challenging to do the same, despite his best efforts. So far this has meant baking in the mornings, making sure Haymitch is still alive in the afternoons, and holing himself up in one of his spare rooms in the evenings, painting until he is too tired to concentrate. At some point he trudges to the bedroom, sometimes falling asleep with the prosthetic leg still on and waking to shooting pain running up his thigh as instant punishment.

Last night he at least remembered to take the damn thing off, but this of course means that he has to now spend his morning fumbling to strap it back on. He is still getting used to having to _attach_ his leg each dawn, despite the several months that have passed since he first woke up without that rather critical appendage.

Reluctantly, he swings himself over to the edge of the bed and reaches out for the prosthesis, which is leaning against his bedside table. Then he leans towards the drawer to gather enough socks, and peals back the empty leg of his striped pajama pants until the mangled stump of what remains is revealed, just above where the knee once was. The skin there is all scar tissue, textured and thick, and it still feels rough and unfamiliar beneath his fingertips. All the Capitol body polishing in the world, so adept at rendering invisible scrapes and cuts and scars, was no match for what is left of his leg. He hates looking at it. Sometimes, caught up in it, he’s almost able to feel Cato’s sword again as it slices to his bone. He tries hard not to think about that now, just as he tries not to think about the morning he awoke to discover that he could not feel his leg at all, and then lifted back the sheets to find out the reason why. 

This morning, his hands shake as he slides on the sleeve and then four thick coats of socks over it. These layers still won’t quite be enough, he knows, to prevent the friction of the prosthetic rubbing against his skin, irritating him as he makes the long walk into town.

_Town_. He sighs. This is today’s interruption of his tentative daily routine: town. But he has no choice, it’s either that or go without groceries and have to bum off of Haymitch—who keeps nothing but Ripper’s white liquor and half emptied jars of peanut butter in his pantry—until the supply train arrives from the Capitol next week. The train shipments bring the tesserae portions and merchant supplies for Twelve, and now they bring his and Katniss’ winnings, too. Along with Haymitch, they are allowed to order whatever they want to be sent to them directly from the Capitol as part of these shipments, and Peeta almost always uses this system to order his food. After being away for a month, however, his cabinets ran bare before he was able to put in his fresh order. This means he has to take the long walk to the market this morning instead of doing his usual loop around the Victor’s Village, dropping off bread to Haymitch and the Everdeens.

_A walk into town._ It shouldn’t sound so nauseating, but it does. He’s been living off of rice cereal for the past two days just so he could push off the trip for a little longer. But there’s no use in delaying it any further…today is the day. Peeta sighs, gingerly standing up and taking a few tentative steps towards the armoire. He’s learned his lesson about standing up too quickly on the prosthesis, and after falling nearly every morning for the first month after losing his leg, he is in no hurry for a repeat performance.

A quick shower and half a cup of black coffee later, and he is standing on the precipice of the Victor’s Village, slowly edging his way towards the town. Yellow sunlight has just barely begun to break through the thick clouds, and when it shines down on Twelve, it illuminates the long line of miner’s heading in the direction of the mines, their faces downcast, wearing matching expressions of exhaustion intermixed with disdain. None of these men meet Peeta’s eye as he passes them. Still, if it is still early enough for the miners to just now be going into work, he might reach town before the bakery opens. This is a good thing. Peeta trudges on.

At the time he reaches it, the square is quiet. Most of the shops won’t open for another hour, once all the miners on the morning shift are deep underground and the children have just left for school. He glances at the corner shoe shop and imagines Delly getting ready inside. They used to always walk to the school together, but by now she’s probably used to walking alone. He and Katniss are no longer required to attend school, and in Capitol-speak _“not required”_ is a thinly veiled euphemism for _“not allowed.”_ Victors, once they’ve won, are first deified and then forgotten by their Districts, meant to be significant only in relation to the Games, paraded out once a year at the Reapings and then quietly tucked away, no longer of use. Returning to school would give them too much of a chance to intermix with other kids again. And they might start to give their peers ideas, ones that in the opinion of the Capitol they’re better off not having. Or, at least, that’s how Peeta imagines their warped reasoning.

Directly outside the Cartwright’s shop, Peeta pivots and heads in the direction of home—his old home, he supposes, now that he lives alone in the Victor’s Village.

The bakery is four shops down from the Shoemaker’s. Capitol victory banners still hang in every shop window in the square, and the bakery is no exception. A stylized portrait of himself and Katniss stares back at him on each of these posters. In this picture, they stand together, Katniss in front, pressed against him, and him behind, his arms wrapped protectively around her waist. They are both dressed in white, which stands out starkly against the many colorful backgrounds, different on every sign: red, blue, green. Beneath the picture, District 12’s insignia is pasted beside a stylized emblem for the 74th Games. WELCOME HOME, VICTORS! is emblazoned in bold block lettering above their heads.

When he knocks on the rear door of the bakery, where the ovens are kept, it is Bannock who answers, his arms covered in flour from kneading the morning loaves. Peeta breathes a sigh of relief at the sight. “Oy, Rye, look who finally decided to show up!” his oldest brother calls behind him into the kitchen. From somewhere in it’s depths, his other brother emerges, and Rye’s face breaks into a wide smile at the sight of him. Bannock steps aside to let him pass.

“Peeta!” Rye says gleefully, abandoning the pie crusts he’s been edging into a tin to slap his brother on the back. “How was the tour?” Nobody mentions that Peeta’s been home for a week already but has only just now come round to see them, or that they themselves have made no effort to seek him out in return.

Peeta shrugs in response, like it’s nothing. “Fine,” he answers, stepping into the boiling kitchen. Even now, as winter is only just reaching its end, the room is stiflingly hot.

If Rye and Bannock notice his limp as he enters, they don’t say anything about that, either. Everyone in his family is good at not asking too many questions. It’s a skill they learned long before Peeta’s time in the arena.

“How’s business been?” Peeta ventures, carefully steering the subject away from the Victory Tour. His brothers both shrug.

“The usual,” Bannock says, going back to his kneading. “But our workloads are double now.” He looks at Peeta almost accusingly as he says this, and Peeta suddenly wants to shrink back into the wall, unable to avoid feeling ashamed. Before the Games, he got up at dawn to form bread loaves or frost the day’s cookies and cupcakes with his family before school. Now he supposes his usual work has been divided between his brothers, adding to all that they already had to do. Peeta sighs. He’d willingly come back and help them, but like school, work _isn’t required_ for Victors of the Games. He’s stuck in the Victor’s Village now, and his family is left to push on without him.

“Don’t be an ass,” Rye snaps at Bannock, gesturing Peeta over. Next to Rye’s pie crusts are rows of sugar cookies, each decorated in intricate but somewhat wobbly buttercream designs. “While you’re here, want to fix these?” his brother asks, turning to look at Peeta and mouthing _“Mom,”_ in explanation. Peeta isn’t surprised by this. Besides him, their mother is the only one with a steady enough hand to even attempt detail work. He feels a strange sense of pleasure at knowing that she isn’t doing _quite_ as good of a job. Picking up his mother’s abandoned piping bag, he begins to straighten out her lines.

Preoccupied by the frosting, for the first time in weeks, he’s able to momentarily forget about the Games, even about Katniss. It feels strangely normal, being back here, in the kitchen with Bannock and Rye, preparing the breads and sweets that will fill the shop’s cases in less than an hour when the bakery opens. Lost in the work, he almost forgets why he’s come here in the first place. But it comes rushing back to him as Bannock pulls a tray of bread loaves out of one of the ovens and sets it on the rack to cool.

“Is Dad here?” Peeta asks, carefully re-leafing some of his mother’s roses, stopping only to glance up quickly at Rye.

“Gone out,” responds his brother. “Went to the post office early to get in next week’s shipment before the crowd. We’re nearly out of flour.”

Peeta’s hand shakes and his perfect straight line of frosting breaks, so that the cookie he is working on comes out looking worse than it did before. He’s missed his chance then, once again. “Oh. I wanted to speak to him before he ordered more.”

“Mom’s out front,” Bannock says simply. Peeta doesn’t bother to look up in acknowledgement of this comment. Even if he wanted to ask her, which he vehemently doesn’t—she’d never say yes.

“I’ll just come back later—” he begins, adding a final flourish of frosting and setting the cookie down. Before he can finish the thought, the door that leads from the kitchen into the store itself is pushed open, and he is confronted by his startled mother, whose eyes immediately narrow at the sight of him, darting from her youngest son back to the piping bag in his hand.

“What on earth are you doing here?” she says roughly, eyeing him with suspicion. _Hello to you too,_ _Mom,_ he thinks bitterly, dropping the piping bag like it’s burned him. _Stupid,_ he thinks to himself. _I was so stupid to come._

“Well, get out,” the woman says flatly but firmly, glaring a little at him now. The creases in her face have deepened, so that she’s never looked older. Peeta thinks she looks entirely worn down. It was never easy keeping the bakery afloat, and now, with one less hand… He can’t help but feel bad for her. “I’m not about to get in trouble if they catch you working.” _Mostly._

“Yes ma’am,” Peeta answers as if by reflex. But he stops himself before he’s reached the door. _This is ridiculous_. He’s not 12 years old anymore. There is no reason to cower before her. “Actually,” he says, turning back to her, “I didn’t come here to work. I came to visit, and to talk with Dad. I can wait for him.” Bannock and Rye have both dropped their work now to stare at him in surprise. Bannock looks wearily between Peeta and his mother. Rye looks downright panicked. 

“What do you want with your father?” his mother hisses.

Peeta hesitates, then takes a deep breath and plows forward. What the hell…she’s bound to find out sometime, if his father accepts. “I want to help out with the bakery—Not by working, obviously,” he quickly adds, seeing the look of outrage on her face. “Just with getting supplies.” _Deep breaths, Peeta._ “I want you to stop buying tesserae grain.”

Rye sucks in a breath. Peeta’s eyes stay trained on his mother’s, determined not to blink first. Her beady eyes have narrowed into slits. “There’s no reason not to,” Peeta continues, set on finishing the pitch now that he’s foolishly started it. “I have the money. It won’t be any extra cost to the bakery, I promise.”

He knows that cost is the least of his mother’s concerns. For her, the grainy morning loaves—the cheapest bread their store sells, which is mostly bought by miners from the Seam with the scraps left over from their latest paychecks—have always been about more than saving on costs. _Why should the Seam eat well?_ has long been his mother’s motto, no matter that the morning loaves make up at least a quarter of the bakery’s profits.

The loaves are half real flour and half tesserae flour—the same poorly textured, rubble-like grain that’s included in the District’s tesserae allotments—which can be bought by anyone for half the price of the good stuff. The tesserae flour ruins the bread, in Peeta’s opinion, even when carefully folded in with the real stuff—but it’s cheap. To his mother, this fact is its winning endorsement. The Seam people don’t even notice, she insists, and to a certain extent, she’s right. Compared to just using tesserae grain, which by nature only makes bread that comes out flat and dense and tasteless, the morning loaves are still a luxury for most mining families. The carefully added portion of real, expensive flour is enough to give the bread rise and mask some of the tesserae’s grainy flavor. But families from the Seam would easily notice a difference if they’d ever tasted real, untarnished bread. Compared to the airy ciabattas and flavorful sourdoughs the bakery sells to Twelve’s Peacekeepers and the other merchants, the morning loaves taste stale and dry. Still, selling them is a quick and consistent source of profit.

The worst part, in Peeta’s opinion, is that no one who buys the morning loaves knows that they’re paying too much for what is basically glorified tesserae. The bread is better than what they’re used to, so no one questions it as they pass over the last of their coins for a loaf or two.

“Absolutely not,” his mother says sharply. Peeta feels his stomach drop at her tone. He expected no other answer from her, of course. That was why he wanted to go directly to his father.

“Why not?” he demands. “You can charge the same price, I’ll pay for the better flour, and the customers will get better bread. Everyone wins.”

“Better bread? Heartier, more like it, and if we give them heartier bread _those_ people will need to buy less of it. Then who wins and who loses?” She gestures vaguely in the direction of the Seam, her voice thick with disgust.

“Do you even hear yourself, Mom?” Peeta snaps, his voice rising now. “’Those people’ are _starving_ , and instead of helping them—at no cost to yourself, I might add—you want to keep selling them this crap.” In his anger, he picks up one of the half cooled loaves Bannock left on the rack and chucks it into the bin, surprising even himself. He would never have done that, before. _Shut up and take it_ has been _his_ motto for years. Not anymore.

“Peet…” Rye warns. But Peeta ignores him, glaring at his mother in defiance. She surges forward, waving a shaking finger in his face, her crooked fingernail just barely missing his skin.

“How _dare_ you,” she screams, “How dare you come in here and make demands like you own the place. Just because that _Seam slut_ got you out of that arena…couldn’t even bring you home in one piece…even more useless than before, with that leg…a cripple for a son, the shame of it….” One hand is still shaking furiously in front of his face, the other has a death grip around the rolling pin it’s still clutching. Peeta only catches half of her sporadic rant, his eyes trained on the whiteness of her knuckles against the dark wood of the rolling pin.

He isn’t scared of her anymore, not really. She wouldn’t dare hit him now that he’s a Victor…there’s too much risk of drawing in unwanted attention, of someone finally not looking the other way. Still, the words always were just as bad as the blows. He tries not to listen. He takes a step back.

“I’m leaving,” he announces quietly, almost calmly. He might even seem composed, if it wasn’t for the intense feeling of his whole body trembling, which must be noticeable to the other three people in the room.

As he nods once at Rye in goodbye, his mother still nonsensically shouting about how terrible it is that he came back alive (or at least this seems to be the general essence), the bell over the door tinkles, and then his father enters, clutching the shipment confirmation papers from the station and shutting his mother up at once. “Peeta!” The man booms, his face breaking into a grin just as wide as Rye’s at the sight of his youngest son. The expression fades when the smile isn’t returned, and he notices that both his son’s and wife’s faces are bright red. “What’s happened…?” he begins, but Peeta cuts him off, pushing past him towards the door.

“I’ll see you later, Dad,” he says quietly, sparing an apologetic glance at his father before pushing out the door. He can hear his old man calling _Son, wait—_ as he leaves, but Peeta doesn’t turn around.

The nearest bench isn’t near enough, so instead he collapses onto the ledge of the little tiled fountain between the bakery and the sweet shop, where he immediately buries his head in his hands. It had been stupid to go in the first place, he thinks. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ It would have been worth it if he’d at least convinced her on the grain, but he hadn’t managed even that.

He looks around the plaza, still nearly empty, but a glance at his watch tells him there’s only 5 more minutes before the morning school rush. Some of the more ambitious lot have already trickled out their side doors, starting their daily shuffle across the plaza towards the school building that’s located halfway in between the market and the Seam. Once school is underway, the shops, including the bakery, will start to open up as well. He can’t stay here moping as everyone in town comes out to start their day. Something like a Victor crying on a fountain ledge might start rumors, end up in papers, get back to President Snow. Then where would he and Katniss be?

_Groceries,_ he reminds himself brusquely, and forces himself to stand. At the very least, he can successfully get the groceries.

When he finally makes it back to the Victor’s Village, laden with paper bags filled with baking ingredients, his head is still swimming from the encounter with his mother. All he can think about are her horrible words about Katniss, and her refusal to make real bread for the people of Twelve. His fingers clench as he puts away the sugar. What the hell was the point of winning if he can’t even help anyone? If Twelve’s going to continue to starve and its children will continue to be sent to die and all there is left for him and Katniss is a life of selling their bodies to the Capitol’s highest bidders?

Every afternoon he checks the mailbox for the letter from the Capitol that will summon him back into the depths of that hell. Every day he waits.

Paint. That’s what he knows he needs. He shoves the milk jug in the fridge and leaves the rest of his groceries in bags on the kitchen island, abandoning them to climb upstairs to his makeshift studio. One of the first things he did upon moving in was push the Capitol-provided furniture against the walls, so that in the center of the room there is only his easel and an empty canvas. Completed paintings are stacked upon the stripped back bed haphazardly, others slanted against the remaining wall space to dry. He tries not to look at them. Better to paint them and then go back to trying to forget.

When Haymitch arrives, hours later, Peeta doesn’t hear him come in. He is too focused on getting the details right, lightening the indigo paint by mixing it with an off-white, adding a little violet. He hasn’t been neat about this painting, and as a whole that isn’t the point of it. It’s a painting that simply needed to be done, and his hand moves swiftly and messily with the brush as he hurries to get his thoughts down on the canvas. Outside, the sky has brightened with the afternoon sun and then dwindled again with the onset of early evening. When Haymitch grunts his name from the doorway behind him, Peeta jumps about a foot in the air, and his paint covered brush swashes across the nearly completed painting, smearing it. He won’t bother to fix it, he vaguely thinks. It adds to the effect.

His mentor comes up behind him, peering over Peeta’s shoulder at the canvas, and sucks in a deep breath. “Holy shit kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I hope the morning loaf concept made as much sense on paper as it does in my head. Basically, the idea is just that "wealthier" families whose kids don't need to enter their names into the reaping extra times in exchange for food are instead able to purchase the items that are supplied in the tesserae. So you can still get the same goods from the Capitol, either by applying for tesserae or by simply buying them.


	4. Chapter 4

“What are you even doing here?” says Peeta testily, staring at his mentor from the across the smooth marble expanse of his kitchen island. The remainder of the groceries, abandoned when he ran up to the studio, have since been put away, and in their place lies a dead squirrel, freshly skinned and gutted. He and Haymitch stand on either side of it. Behind Peeta, the tea kettle whistles, and he turns around to busy himself with pouring them each a cup.

“You haven’t come by to hound me,” Haymitch says by way of answer, taking his steaming mug from Peeta and immediately tainting it with liquor from his flask. “And it’s 6.”

“So?”

“So I came to you.”

“Am I really that predictable?”

“Yes. Also, I was _very forcibly_ instructed to deliver this,” he gestures to the squirrel. “The girl dropped it off for you, and it’s a much better one than the scrawny thing she gave me, I’ll have you know. Says thanks for all the bread.”

Peeta grits his teeth, taking a sip of his tea just to have something to do with his hands. It’s still too hot, and the searing liquid burns his throat as it goes down. “Why didn’t she just come here herself then?”

“Be glad she didn’t, boy. If she’d seen you painting _that_ , can you imagine?”

“Nobody was meant to see it,” Peeta says sharply. “It was just a distraction. Can we not talk about it, please?”

There’s a long and weighted pause between them. Haymitch seems to be deciding how to go about saying whatever it is that he came to say. Finally, he settles for, “She misses you.”

Peeta can’t help but let out a snort. “Yeah? Well she sure has a funny way of showing it.” He surprises even himself at just how biting his voice sounds as it comes out.

“You two are something else, you know that? Skip the bullshit. If you want to see her, go out and see her. Or have you forgotten that you live two doors down?”

“It isn’t that simple,” Peeta insists. “I’ve already been trying that, haven’t I? I go over there every day.”

“You drop off bread and leave as soon as her mother tells you she’s not home,” Haymitch says pointedly. Peeta just shrugs noncommittally, knowing he’s right. True to form, Haymitch doesn’t let up. “I think you should go see her,” he says more firmly. His brows furrow as he says it, like he knows something he’s not saying.

“What is it?” In his head, Peeta’s mind is already swimming with a range of horrifying possibilities. Has Katniss already gotten a letter beckoning her to the Capital? But Haymitch gives no further explanation.

“Dinner at my house, tomorrow,” the man says, swinging back the rest of his tea like it’s a shot of something much stronger and sliding his empty cup back across the island toward the sink. Haymitch’s eyes linger for a moment on Peeta’s hands, still stained with blue-ish purple paint. In response, Peeta shoves them roughly into his pockets, out of sight. His mentor’s gaze breaks. “Go see her,” he instructs again, heading for the door. “You could sure as hell both use it.”

* * *

It is harder to hunt now in Twelve.

Gale filled her in on this the morning after her return from the Victory Tour, as they sat in their usual spot in the woods, looking out over the ravine to the beautiful land beneath. _They brought in more Peacekeepers, Catnip, soon as you left_ , he’d said in hushed tones. _And there’s no use trying to sell to these ones. They’ve been doing raids on the Hob, sometimes even on people’s homes. They’re on the hunt, Katniss._

_Be careful,_ he’d said.

He didn’t bring up the kiss, the one he planted on her the day before she left on tour, and for that Katniss feels enormously grateful. She still hasn’t decided how she feels about the kiss itself, though she is leaning strongly towards _indifferent,_ which can’t be a good sign.

Her best friend works in the mines now, six days a week. She hasn’t seen him once since that first Sunday back. In this, the mines are only partially to blame. Yes, Gale’s busy with the immovable time schedule of a miner’s life, but he still finds time to check his traps…and she makes sure she’s not there when he does it. She’s avoidinghim, there is no use denying it. At first, she pretended to herself it wasbecause of that kiss…but if he was going to bring it up, he’d have done so already. It isn’t that, or at least not _only_ that. No. In reality, she’s avoiding him because she doesn’t know how to tell him that she’s leaving again, and probably soon. She especially doesn’t know how to tell him what she’s leaving _for_.

_I don’t have to tell him_ , she reminds herself, the same mantra she’s been repeating for two weeks now. This is no good either, of course. She needs him to look after Prim, for one thing. And besides, if she doesn’t tell him now, he’ll only see her on the Capitol screens, dangling off some rich stranger’s arm, and think the worst of her, like he had with Finnick. He’ll assume she’s sold herself out to the Capitol—a traitor. Her panic at this possibility far outweighs her fear of telling him the truth, but even so, Katniss can’t bring herself to do it.

She sleeps instead. Or at least lies in bed and pretends to be asleep. It’s a strategy that mostly seems to be working, though she can tell that both her mother and Prim are worried about her. Prim checks in on her practically every hour, and Katniss only sometimes has the strength to indulge her. The rest of the time she lies with the blinds down and the lights off, and closes her eyes until Prim’s footsteps retreat the same way they came.

Whatever lingering hope she had left has finally dried up; this is the clean, sheer thing of it. There is no way to stop the Capital—Katniss knows that much now. Knows that there is no way to save herself and Peeta from Snow’s claws now that he’s sunk them deep beneath their skin. She has to do this for Prim. _They_ have to do this, so that Snow won’t get to claw his way into her little sister, too. But to protect one person she loves, she must throw another to the wolves.

_But I don’t love Peeta,_ she reminds herself, hoping maybe this time it’ll stick. No matter how many times she says it, it hasn’t seemed to sink in so far. She still finds her thoughts drifting, unbidden, to the way that he held her in his arms on the long nights of the Victory Tour, like they were the last two people on Earth. _Stay with me? Always._ The mere thought of it is enough to send a heat running down her spine, pooling in the space between her thighs.

_I don’t love him,_ she repeats, as though this will be the time that convinces her. It would be so much easier if she cared nothing for him, if she could forget about him completely. The more people you care about, the more you have to lose. But just as strongly as one side of her brain screams _you don’t love him_ , the other side screams back, _you better not lose him._

The squirrel was a peace offering. She wonders if he knows that. She wonders if Haymitch knew it, when she handed it over to him on the strict condition that he silently deliver it to Peeta. After all, she’s been avoiding Peeta, too, as much as Gale. Out of sight, out of mind, that was her thinking. It isn’t working, in either case.

So…an olive branch. She woke at dawn to get an early start in the woods, and managed to catch enough squirrels to pass around, and a rabbit too. First she delivered the rabbit to the Hawthornes after Gale had already left for the mines, then divvied up the squirrels between her house and Haymitch’s, giving him an extra one to pass along to Peeta. She’d dropped one off at the bakery as well, on the sly. Just passed it quickly through the back door directly into the baker’s hands, refusing to take payment in return. If it had been risky going hunting in the first place, it was even more so to then take her fresh game into town…but it needed to be done. “For the cookies,” she whispered to him, and Mr. Mellark’s eyes had crinkled in sudden recollection of what had clearly, for him, been long forgotten. But Katniss hasn’t forgotten. She may have (regretfully) thrown the cookies off the train on the way to the Capitol, but she hasn’t forgotten his kindness, hasn’t forgotten how he’d promised to make sure Prim remained fed, on the day she was reaped.

Mr. Mellark accepted the squirrel. “Shot right through the eye, yet again,” the baker had said admiringly. There was a moment of awkwardness, then he’d added, “Thank you, Katniss. I’m glad my son has someone like you to look out for him,” before disappearing back inside. This felt very much like praise she did not deserve, but she nonetheless thought about his words for the entire walk home.

This is the most productive she’s been in days, all that hunting and distributing, and it’s oddly exhausting. She never used to tire this easily, Katniss thinks, although maybe she just isn’t remembering correctly. Either way, she crawls back into bed immediately upon her return, and when Prim’s soft footsteps are heard padding in not longer after, she leaves the lights off and her eyes firmly shut.

* * *

_He’s burnt the bread again._

_The edges are all black, completely unsalvageable, and his mother is going to be so upset when she sees it. This time, it was a birthday cake, one which he’d been so distracted frosting that he’d forgotten to keep an eye on the loaves in the oven. A little more of the blue for the side of the train car, a little more yellow on the “5” scrawled on the topmost layer. The smell of burning in the background. By the time he pulled the loaves from the oven, it was far too late._

_There are footsteps in the corridor now and he knows instinctively that it’s going to be her, braces himself for the sharp hard blow of the rolling pin, raises his hands to protect his face._

_But there’s something strange. The footsteps don’t seem to be pounding against the kitchen tile, in the heavy way his mother stomps when she’s off on a rampage. These are quiet, almost silent. Like they’re tip-toeing across grass. Through the space between his fingers he sees her, but only once she is already in front of him. It is not his mother but Clove, with her knife extended, already at his throat. He can feel the sharp metallic edge_ just _breaking the flesh of his throat, can practically hear the gamemakers ready a cannon._

_The scene changes just before Clove slices him from ear to ear. The bakery dissolves, or all of it but the oven, where the smell of the burning bread still permeates through the air. The birthday cake, however, is gone, along with the kitchen counter it sat on and all four walls. In their place is the arena._

_Peeta is at its center once again, and around him the artificial forest is eerily quiet, just like it was in the end. There is no sign of Clove, her actually nor the twisted mutt version of her. He looks around desperately for Katniss, but there is no sign of her, either. He seems to be the last one left. Even the trees are silent._

_He approaches the oven, which has taken the place of the cornucopia in the center of the arena. For some reason, this doesn’t immediately strike him as odd. His hand hovers over the oven door—not touching. But he can still smell the burning bread, and is suddenly entirely certain that he has to get it out, so that Katniss can survive. She must be somewhere, close. He has to give it to her._

_His fingers twist around the handle and yank. But inside the oven there is no bread._

_It is his leg instead, burnt up and grotesquely twisted, lying blackened on the topmost oven rack. Only then does he realize he’s been missing it. He looks down to see only empty air where his left leg should be, and suddenly, he feels impossibly dizzy. How has he managed to stand on just the one leg left to him for this long? No sooner has he thought it then he begins to lose his balance. Now he is falling, down, down, down…_

He wakes right before he hits the ground. Around him, the blankets have coiled thickly around his body, tangling him in their grasp when his falling body pulled them down alongside him. He can feel a bruise forming already at his elbow, and realizes he must have hit the side table on the way down. Peeta groans, struggling to liberate himself from the covers and pull himself back onto the mattress. Once he manages it, he tries hard to slow his breathing, with little success. Already, the details of the dream are fading from his grasp, but the terror is not.

There is a heavy breeze coming in through the window, where the curtains are still wide open, letting in all the damp nighttime air. After Haymitch left, Peeta spent the rest of the evening thinking over the man’s words and gazing out his window to the house across the street. He must have forgotten to close the blinds before he went to bed. Through it, he sees that her bedroom light is still on, too. So she is also awake.

He hesitates, then fumbles through the darkness for his prosthesis.

Three sharp knocks on her door, he tells himself, and if she doesn’t hear them, or, more likely, if she hears them but doesn’t answer, he’ll turn around and go back home. There’s no sense in banging on her door forever. He doesn’t want to risk waking her mother or Prim.

There’s no need for this anxiety. Katniss answers after the second knock, staring at him quizzically as she opens the door just wide enough for him to slip in.

He expects her to ask _what are you doing here?_ but instead she says, “Why are you still awake?” in a gentle tone that seems laced with concern, almost like she’s _worried_ about him. He shuffles from real foot to fake one, feeling out of place in the dark interior of her foyer. He’s never been inside her house at night before.

“Why do you think?” he whispers back. As he meets her stare, something is exchanged between them without words. Memories of the arena, maybe, or else the train. Her forehead crinkles. Her hands move to the ends of her hair, fiddling with the edges.

“I had one too,” she admits softly. “C’mon.”

Peeta follows her up the staircase and down the hall, past the closed doors that must belong to her mother and Prim’s rooms. Katniss’ house is a carbon copy of his own, only with more inhabitants. Prim has decorated her door with paper flowers, carefully cut out of red and yellow and blue cardstock paper. For whatever reason, looking at it makes him feel instantly lonely.

Katniss’ room is at the end of the hall, the far-too-large master suite which her mother insisted that she take. Katniss leads him into it wordlessly, closing the door behind them. Then she crawls back into her bed, pulling back the quilt on the right-hand side and gesturing for him to follow. He does, without hesitation, but he stays on the very edge of his side of the bed, not daring to presume that he is once again allowed to touch her. Still, being so close is magnetic, like there is a gravitational pull hurdling them towards one another. His fingers tremble with the desire to pull her close, to cling to her for balance.

In the end, it is Katniss who makes the first move. He is staring up at her ceiling, trying to pretend like he isn’t losing his mind, what with being so close to her yet with so much space between them, when her hand hastily meets his own under the covers. Once she’s found it, she slides her fingers into the slates between his own, and he can’t help but wonder if she feels them trembling. When he looks over at her, Katniss’ eyes are glued to the ceiling as well, determinedly not returning his gaze.

Still, the feel of her hand has been enough to embolden him into action. He scoots closer, and sure enough, Katniss follows his lead, until at last they meet in the center of her bed, and her heads slots neatly into the divot of skin below his shoulder. Tentatively, he wraps his arms around her narrow frame and hugs her to his chest. _This is real_ , he thinks, filing the knowledge away for later.

After that, they don’t move for some time. Katniss has turned off the lights, shrouding them in darkness. Eventually, her head shifts just a little, and she whispers, “What was it about tonight? Your nightmare?” This is the same script they used to follow on the train, after one of them woke up screaming; they’d lie in the other’s arms and quietly admit what it was, that night, that had tipped them over the edge.

It is impossibly strange, this complicated intimacy between them. What is it that allows her to press him about his darkest fears under the cover of nightfall, then wake the next morning and pretend that they’re barely friends? What is it that makes him respond? Tonight he says, “I don’t remember,” which is true. But he takes a minute to think back, almost desperately trying to recall what had caused him such a panic, wanting to have something more to tell her, or perhaps wanting to justify why he had knocked on her door at 2 o’clock in the morning in a clear panic. “The arena again,” he says finally. “Fire. I think it was something to do with my leg. And there was burnt bread.” He lists off these vague details, unable to string them together to mean anything. The dream has already faded from memory, which might be a good thing if he didn’t know it’d be back tomorrow night, or the night after that. Neither one of them can escape the nightmares for long.

“Mine was about you,” Katniss says abruptly. Peeta tenses. “You were dead. They’d just announced that two tributes could win, and I was searching and searching to find you. But by the time I did, you were—you were all cold….” Her matter-of-fact tone begins to waver a little, and Peeta can feel his shirt dampening where her face lies. It’s then that he realizes she’s crying.

“Hey,” he says instantly, squeezing her more tightly, “Hey, it’s okay. Shhh…it’s all right. I’m all right. Thanks to you.”

Suddenly her head is off his chest, and hovering about him. He can just barely make out her features by the soft glow coming in through the window from the illuminated streetlamps outside. Her eyes are noticeably wet, but she makes no effort to hide her tears. “I’m sorry, Peeta,” she whispers, “I’m sorry.” She doesn’t mean about the nightmare.

“It’s okay,” he repeats, even though it really isn’t, none of this is. But what else is he supposed to say?

“I shouldn’t have ignored you,” she continues, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Her breaths are coming in shallow now, almost raspy. Hastily he tries to nudge her back down beside him, but she won’t budge. “It’s like—It’s like I can’t control it…Every time I look at you… _How are we supposed to do this_ , Peeta?” Her voice is as desperate now as he’s ever heard it.

What is _this_? He wonders. _This_ as in sleeping side by side? Or this as in being Victors? Mentors? Capital slaves? Lovers, fake or…real? He figures it’s a little of all of it, except for maybe the last one. “Lie back down, please,” he says gently, tugging a little on her hand to try and persuade her.

Finally, she does, wiping her tears hastily before sliding back under the covers. He pulls her head against him once more, runs his fingers through her thick hair, feels her weight settling against him.

"I’m so sorry,” she repeats.

He wonders if she’ll be willing to say it as boldly in the daytime. You never know what will carry over and what will be forgotten after a night like this. “It was a good squirrel, so I suppose you’re forgiven,” he says, trying for lightness.

Katniss lets out a little chuckle, and Peeta thinks that hearing it, along with the little smile that lingers on her face afterwards, is enough to make the past week and a half of silence worth it. Then he thinks that perhaps he is beginning to rely a little too heavily on Katniss Everdeen’s smile.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again everyone. Apologizes for the few week's delay in posting. My brother is getting married in a week and a half and as I'm sure you can imagine, the pandemic has brought along it's share of wedding challenges. I have been busy helping to prepare and keep everyone safe, and next week I will be busy being a bridesmaid, so the next chapter might be a little delayed as well. 
> 
> Hopefully this chapter will make up for it ;)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has left enthusiastic and/or passionate reviews... If you don't like Katniss at the moment, I hope you will start to see a little more of her motivations here. Katniss is far from perfect, but she is actually one of my all-time favorite characters and I am trying my very best to do her justice.

Haymitch’s invitation to dinner turns out to be entirely ironic, because Katniss arrives to find that their mentor has done actually nothing to provide them with anything by way of a meal. The best that can be said is that he’s cleared off a three-foot square of counter space for them in his otherwise chaotic kitchen. Behind this one clean surface stands Peeta, in the process of chopping onions. He looks up as she walks in, but even though he smiles, she can tell it’s strained. In the stark light of day, the two of them are still very much on uneven terms. Haymitch rolls his eyes at the exchange and then heads for the table on the other side of the room. “Call me when you have something edible,” he yells back at them, grabbing hold of a bottle of liquor, strategically leaning amongst the clutter, on his way out. 

Peeta gestures her over. “He hasn’t touched the squirrel you brought him. I thought we could make meat pies?”

Katniss readily agrees, moving to Haymitch’s freezer to retrieve the game, determinedly taking it upon herself to fix it for their consumption. Katniss would never declare herself a _great_ cook, but she has spent years making meals for her family out of her hunting hauls; at the least she knows how to fix an edible squirrel.

The two of them work in companionable silence. Waiting for the meat to defrost, Katniss shuffles over to help Peeta with the filling. At one point he has to return to his own house to gather the necessary spices; the only thing Haymitch has by way of seasoning is a single, half empty canister of salt, which they recover from the back of a very dusty cupboard.

As Katniss dices and seasons the meat, Peeta makes the crusts. Occasionally their elbows bump as they move around one another, and for whatever reason this is enough to set her head spinning. She is aware of being extra conscious of him this evening, which is probably a result of waking up practically on top of him this morning. Every time their skin touches, a jolt runs through her akin to the electricity running through the fence outside, and she quickly draws away. Haymitch watches this all from the table, drinking and smirking. Katniss is so annoyed that she’s tempted to pelt the uncooked chunks of meat at him, but hears a warning in her head that sounds suspiciously like Effie, and ultimately refrains.

“You two seem on brighter terms today,” their mentor chirps, in his usual manner of mocking cheerfulness. 

Katniss supposes he’s right…to an extent. She thinks about how she was crying all over the boy beside her last night and can’t help but feel ashamed. Hasn’t she spent years carefully refusing to allow herself to become that attached to anyone? What does it matter if she had the best few hours of sleep in his arms since returning home? She doesn’t need him, can’t let herself rely on him. It won’t help either of them, not here, and certainly not once they’re back in the Capitol.

Still…it’s impossibly _nice_ to be back on speaking terms. It was her fault they’d lost them again in the first place, of course. These things are always her fault. But Peeta is a paradox in her life the way that no one else can be. On the one hand he’ll forever be connected to the arena; A reminder of the Games, and of a future life in the Capitol that neither of them want. On the other hand, he is her fellow victor, the only person in the world who understands what it was like to go into the 74thHunger Games and survive to come back out of it. On top of that, he is her friend. More than a friend. Someone she is increasingly worried she won’t be able to live without. Katniss wants to forget about him just as much as she wants to cling to him tightly, and somehow she fears that neither response will be enough to protect him.

“Want some of this?” the boy in question asks, and she turns to see that he is holding up a bottle of blood red wine, dusty like it’s been dug out from the back of Haymitch’s pantry with the salt, which it probably has. Haymitch drinks mostly hard liquor, and a bottle of wine that looks as if it came directly from the Capitol has probably long been last on his drinking list. At the look Katniss gives him, Peeta adds, “What? If he’s drinking, why shouldn’t we?”

She thinks back to all the cocktails and wine she consumed at parties along the Victory Tour, all of which made the evenings slightly more bearable, but which resulted in various shades of headache and sometimes a lingering knot in her stomach that refused to go away even the next morning. She shakes her head. Peeta shrugs and pours himself a glass of the dark red liquid anyway, and Haymitch doesn’t blink an eye as he sits down with it. In fact, their mentor seems rather amused.

“Turning to drink, already?” he smirks. “Bit hypocritical if you ask me, boy, considering that two days ago you were here threatening to pour my best vintage down the drain.” He raises his bottle in toast, nonetheless.

If Peeta has been trying to sober Haymitch up, it’s knowledge to Katniss, which makes her feel a little guilty to hear of it now. No doubt this is a valiant but useless cause, but if it’s true, she assumes he probably wouldn’t like to know how much white liquor she’s been buying lately for Haymitch off Ripper in the Hob. As the boys continue to make jabs at each other, she busies herself with setting the table until the oven timer dings.

While they eat, Haymitch and Peeta do most of the talking, giving Katniss’ mind a chance to freely drift back to the morning. After finally managing to fall asleep, she and Peeta had both slept long into the morning, so that by the time they woke it was far too late to sneak Peeta back out before her mother and Prim could notice. Instead, Katniss accepted that she’d have to do whatever this was between them unashamedly, and so had invited him to stay for breakfast.

She entered the kitchen first, and Prim greeted her cheerfully from the table, probably thrilled that she had so much as left her room, which admittedly was more than could be said on some days. “Peeta didn’t come by this morning,” her little sister warned, frowning, “so there’s nothing good, but we’ve still got plenty of cereal in the cabinet if you’re hungry.” It’s almost funny, how quickly Prim has acclimated to the chance to be picky about her food. A year ago, a full box of cereal would have been cherished, eaten by the meager cup-full to make it last as long as humanly possible. Now it’s something to be eaten begrudgingly, only when Peeta’s failed to drop off fresh bagels or bread for toast. The change makes her smile.

“Sorry, Prim. But I can make you whatever you want later, if you’d like,” Peeta spoke, making himself known as he entered the room behind Katniss. Prim turned so red at his sudden appearance that the remembrance of it alone is enough to make Katniss chuckle.

Her mother was less amused. She heard Peeta enter and looked up to see them both standing there in their pajamas, clear evidence that he had stayed the night, and had pursed her lips so tightly they were nothing more than a thin line. But she’d said nothing, and returned wordlessly to the paper she was reading. This is one of the things that both frustrates and relieves Katniss about her mother: she rarely questions her daughter’s choices, even when it’s beyond obvious that she disapproves. Katniss can’t decide if it is because of lingering guilt over her past lapses, or an understanding that since Katniss won the Games and is now a celebrated Victor, she is beyond the typical realm of parental reproach.

In the end, Katniss made them eggs, which they ate in relative silence, as by that time Prim had left for school. Peeta excused himself shortly after, returning a couple of hours later with cookies for Prim, “an olive branch,” he joked, for not bringing her bread that morning. Or, at least, Peeta had _said_ the cookies were for Prim. They were simple shortbread squares with a cutout in the center filled with his homemade raspberry jam—Katniss’ favorite, not her little sister’s—so she had the sneaking suspicion they were meant as an olive branch for her, too. Okay, maybe not an olive branch really, since he had nothing to apologize for. But an acceptance of _her_ apology, then; His response to her squirrel.

“Katniss?” prods Peeta. Her head snaps up. Both he and Haymitch are looking across the table at her expectantly.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Gotten any letters from the Capitol lately, sweetheart?” Haymitch repeats. She quickly shakes her head.

“Haymitch thinks they’re going to call us up soon,” Peeta expounds, not meeting her eyes. Apparently she’s missed a whole conversation about this. There’s no need to explain who “they” are, or what it is they’re going to be called up _for_.

“It’s still too soon,” Katniss says, panicked, turning towards Haymitch. “We only just got home!”

Their mentor shrugs, looking suddenly deflated, almost helpless. “Just rumors from Effie,” he mumbles, taking a long dreg from his glass. “There’s been some buzz about when you two will be…you know… _available.”_

Katniss says nothing, focusing intently on finishing her meat pie. She hasn’t so much as formulated a plan yet for how to explain this situation to her family and Gale. They can’t take her away already! Only, of course they can. They can do whatever they want with her. The next bite of the pie seems devoid of flavor. She barely registers it going down her throat, and wishes she’d accepted the offer of wine to help wash it down.

“I haven’t gotten anything yet either,” Peeta cuts in, with a voice that’s probably intended to be reassuring but sounds more choked. “It might still be a while. Anyway, let’s not talk about it anymore. There’s no use dwelling.”

And so they spend the rest of the meal making small talk, which, of the three of them, only Peeta is any good at. Her and Haymitch mostly nod along as he tells them about one thing or another—how he made the shortbread cookies, some more of which he’s brought along for them to eat as dessert, or his plans for keeping up with his Capitol mandated “talent.” Peeta’s lucky. He has an actual talent to fall back on. Her “talent,” if you can even call it that, consists mainly of flipping through Cinna’s sketches and pretending that fashion holds any interest to her whatsoever beyond a general appreciation for her stylist. Cinna was kind enough to allow his skill to become hers for the sake of the public’s knowledge, but she has put very little effort into actually pursuing the skill herself. It’s therefore impossible not be impressed as Peeta outlines his plans for the paintings he intends to work on next. It’s also a little annoying, frankly, how great he is at everything. She takes a third cookie to numb the pain.

None of them mention anything that might be considered a veer into dangerous territory. No one brings up the new whipping post that was assembled in the square that afternoon, or the peacekeepers that have begun to patrol the town at night, making sure no one is out past curfew. “Squirrel is good,” Haymitch compliments roughly, nodding at her in what she assumes is appreciation for her catch, but neither of the boys ask her directly about her hunting, and the words over the meal remain vague enough that to an outside ear it would seem as though the squirrel materialized from thin air. The truth is that they all know this meal could mean a one-way ticket to test out the new whipping post, and none of them are sure if the liberties Katniss is privy to as a Victor would extend to a pardon when it comes to her poaching. Probably not, if Katniss had to take a guess; The new peacekeepers are tough. They remind her of the kind Rue described to her in the Games, the unsympathetic, brutal soldiers who once killed a handicapped boy for stealing a pair of night vision glasses in District Eleven.

None of them know if their houses in the Victor’s Village are actually bugged, and, more unlikely, if anyone in the Capitol is bothering to listen in if they are. Nevertheless, they have all silently agreed to work off of the assumption that they are always being watched. It is certainly clear to all of them that the leniency that has long persisted in District Twelve under Cray will preside no longer. Watching what one says has always seemed second nature in Panem, but now Katniss adheres to the doctrine with a ceaseless rigidity.

So, she lets Peeta carry the rest of the conversation, all the while wondering what will happen once they leave Haymitch’s. The new peace between them seems too fragile, and like the dim spark of flint before the fire, Katniss is determined to gently coax it to life. In the last few months, Peeta has slipped away from her too many times, mostly by her own doing. Not anymore. If she is finally certain of at least one emotion in regards to him, it is the fear that grips her when she thinks of not having him in her life. The boy with the bread has become too important to her to lose. She wants to cling to him tightly, protect him from the Capitol, and the Games, and even the snotty looks directed at him by those in District 12. Most immediately, she does not want to sleep without him. By the end of the meal, Katniss has made up her mind. As her and Peeta wash the dishes side by side at Haymitch's wide, enamel sink, she turns to him and urgently asks the question she’s been wanting to know the answer to all evening, “You’ll come back tonight?”

He looks at her, and his eyes ask a question in return: _Really?_ She nods.

“If you’re sure,” he says carefully.

“I’m sure. Please _.”_ Katniss hates how weak she sounds, how desperate, but she pushes these feelings aside. What matters more is making sure he comes.

He does.

He comes that night, and the next night as well, and practically every night after that. And in this makeshift manner, they establish what can only be called a new routine. The days continue on much the same, though they are significantly less lonely. Katniss hunts whenever things are calm enough to risk it, twiddles her thumbs when they’re not (which is most of the time, much to her annoyance) hating inactivity for leaving her alone with her thoughts but unable to think of something else to do instead. Peeta bakes or paints. It’s the same as they’ve been doing, only now they check up on one another between doing it, and occasionally Haymitch too. Katniss can’t seem to get behind Peeta’s crusade to wean their mentor off alcohol, but she does agree to help make sure Haymitch at least has something to eat while he drinks himself to death. They’ve been eating supper together more often, the three of them. It’s different. It’s rather nice. She doesn’t admit it out loud.

On Thursdays, the train comes in from the Capitol and her and Peeta walk together down to the station to collect their spoils. These trips are never fun, because the same train that brings them their bulking piles of food and supplies also brings the meager monthly tesserae rations and merchant supplies for the rest of Twelve. The train station is always jam-packed with citizens on supply days, and Katniss is all too aware that there will never be a time when carrying her ample provisions through the throngs of starving Seam and Townspeople won’t leave her hollowed-out and devoid of emotion for days to come. She is beginning to understand why, despite his wealth, Haymitch has spent so much time living off spirits and the occasional stew from the Hob.

Still, the trips are made bearable with Peeta there as well. He manages to at least be less immediately fazed by the stares and resentment of the crowd, and many of the Seam children quickly learn that he is fast to sneak them an extra treat to take home with them on supply day, if he’s given the opportunity. Between the two of them, they usually end up giving a quarter of their groceries away before they’ve even reached the station exit. Of course, Katniss would happily spread the entirety of their winnings out amongst the District—she, Peeta, and Haymitch all have enough money to feed the entirety of Twelve for several years over—but this is too risky. Victors aren’t strictly allowed to freely spread their wealth. They aren’t meant to be generous benefactors, they’re meant to be _apart_ —celebrities who stand on a pedestal above the rest of the district, not elevating their fellow citizens but reminding them of their place, and serving as a general source of community envy and desire. If the new peacekeepers found out they were giving their winnings away to people who _hadn’t strictly earned them_ —in the opinion of the Capitol anyway—it would doubtless get back to President Snow, which is exactly what they don’t need at the moment. As such, all Katniss can do is help mask Peeta from the surrounding guards as he quickly slips an extra something out of their bags and into the tessera packs of eager children—a can of salt here, a bag of good flour there. The station is usually so crowded that this minor rebellion goes unnoticed.

Twice a week, Katniss makes sure to eat directly from the Hob. Greasy Sae, at least, doesn’t hold her win against her, and Katniss is pleased to give her the business. It feels good, in fact, to be able to pay her in cash, to place the coins directly in the old woman’s palm and wrap her shriveled fingers tightly around them before letting go. Even so, if she can she still brings fresh game to the Hob in addition to the money. Paying twice, in coin and trade, is yet another small rebellion.

With the same goal in mind, she and Peeta take occasional walks into town to buy goods from the market and other local merchants, too. They might not be allowed to give things away, but even the Capitol can’t begrudge them simply _buying_ things. Katniss finds this sort of shopping much less comfortable than she does shopping in the Hob, and wonders if Peeta feels just the opposite. Regardless, she lets him handle the payments while they’re in town, watching him chat up the butcher and the seamstress and street fruit seller as she stands awkwardly off to one side. If it’s a weekend and she’s not in school, they take Prim along, too, who of course has no trouble cheerfully mixing with every townie. She’s a natural favorite, it seems, in the town as much as in the Seam.

The one place they never go to is the bakery—not together anyway. Even when Prim lingers outside the windows as they walk past, eying up the frosted cakes and jam-filled tarts and rows of colorful macarons on display there, they don’t stop. “I can make you some of those if you’d like,” Peeta will say whenever Prim compliments something or other in the window, and Katniss looks pointedly at her little sister until she takes the hint and drops the subject. She can only assume Peeta’s reluctance to bring her and Prim home with him has a lot to do with his witch of a mother. Undoubtedly that woman would have something to say about him bringing two Seam girls into her flawless kitchen, even if Katniss did save her son’s life, and he hers. She doesn’t ask him for confirmation of this theory, though she does continue to drop off squirrels for the baker when Peeta’s not around.

Even on the days they spend mostly apart, in the evenings, Peeta almost always comes over. They’re never exactly open about it, but they don’t do much to hide it, either. He waits until after Prim and her mother have gone to sleep, and this serves as their main, if not only, precaution. Once Katniss’ light is the only one on in the house, he walks over and slides through her front door. Katniss has even begun to leave it open, so he won’t have to knock and draw attention. Though it might seem strange, one thing she isn’t afraid of are intruders. No one comes to the Victor’s Village but them. Here in Twelve, people tend to avoid the place like the plague, looking on it with scorn. These are houses of opulence, there to taunt them—just around the corner, but still so far out of their reach. Loitering around them as anyone but a Victor is a cause for arrest. And nothing about these over-decadent houses makes them worth that risk.

Usually, Peeta is gone at the first sign of dawn, still living on bakery hours even though he is no longer at all responsible for the bakery itself. The few times he does oversleep, almost always when one or both of them have had a particularly bad night, Katniss brings him unashamedly down to her kitchen for breakfast, ignoring the suggestive, amused looks Prim gives her as well as the more concerned, unsatisfied eyes of her mother, who resolutely never openly questions their behavior.

Part of her, and not a small part at that, hates how much she longs to be held, how desperate she is for his arms in the moments before he arrives and envelopes her steadily in them. It’s not just that it makes her feel weak, this reliance on the boy with the bread—though that’s certainly a part of it. It is also dangerous. There is a reason that _love_ is rarely used as a descriptor in Twelve. Oh, there are plenty of school-aged girls who like to flirt and plenty of school-aged boys who will willingly take them up on sly offers to meet at the Slag Heap. And many of these couples grow up to have big families in the Seam. But love in itself is rarely allowed to thrive in Twelve, and hardly ever spoken of. People marry out of necessity—a careless pregnancy or the need for another set of wages to survive—or out of obligation. In town, many marriages are arranged for the betterment of the businesses involved. A tailor’s daughter will wed the barber’s son, and it is understood by everyone to be a kind of mutual business transaction. Both families now have a stake in the other shop’s survival. Katniss has never asked, but she can only assume this is how Peeta’s parents ended up with one another.

Family ties are stronger, but even then rarely binding. There is a reason Katniss was the first volunteer in Twelve’s history. When it comes down to it, siblings will share their meager food and fight the other’s bullies in the schoolyard, but they won’t die for each other. There’s love there, certainly, but it’s a different kind of a love, a thinner kind. To love wholeheartedly is to be made vulnerable. These are the women in the Seam who wait every day by the mines to be the first to know that their husbands have returned to them for yet another night. Katniss’ own mother used to do that. It is Mayor Undersee and his fragile wife, a woman who is widely accepted by everyone to be a liability to the Mayor’s career prospects, preventing any chance for him to rise beyond their nothing district, but who all in Twelve also know he will never leave, even if the Capitol itself demanded it of him. It was her, at the reaping, screaming out and taking Prim’s place without a second thought, as if it was the only option—and it was, _for her._ But it is this kind of full-fledged, never wavering, overpowering love that is so dangerous. In Panem, even love can be weaponized. In the last half a year Katniss has at least learned enough to know that much. 

They can already use Prim against her. She doesn’t want them to be able to use Peeta against her, too. As she lets him tangle his limbs around hers, however, she fears it might already be too late.

The nightmares, of course, do not go away, or even lessen. The point of sleeping beside one another has always been not to stop them, but to make them easier to endure. It has been at least a month of this back and forth. Him sneaking in, the lights flickering out, their limbs intertwining beneath the covers, only to jolt apart when one of them wakes up screaming, then fall gradually back into place. Well, not entirely true; Peeta never screams, but she definitely does, and he is always quick to wake up at the first hint of it. They’ve been doing this long enough now that it no longer takes more than a word to convey which of her many torments has taunted her this time. He’ll rub her back or stroke her hair as she comes down from the worst of it, and then she’ll mutter _mutts,_ or _Marvel_ , or _you at the stream,_ and he knows exactly what she’s talking about—and how to soothe her.

It’s much harder to comfort Peeta, and no less than often does Katniss fear that she’s entirely inadequate in doing so. Sometimes she wonders if she even wakes up when it’s just him having a bad night, or is she sleeps right through and misses it completely. Peeta will twitch and move around, but he rarely makes noise above a soft whimpering. And he rarely remembers his dreams once he’s had them, beyond bits and pieces that hardly ever make comprehensible sense. This is one way that they differ. For Katniss, every nightmare is vivid and unforgettable, playing on repeat in her mind long after she’s woken up, like a broken record. Peeta’s nightmares are less straightforward, more abstract. It makes it so much harder to help him.

Tonight, the dream that plagues her is not of the arena. It is an older dream, the long dormant but much familiar one of her father being blown to bits in the mines, the one where she screams at him to run even though he is long, long, gone. Her mother was by the mines when it happened, done with her own work early and standing by in eager anticipation of her husband’s quitting time. She was there, waiting to greet him with a kiss, when the blast hit, when the flames rose…then she was gone, too.

Katniss wakes up still shouting, shooting up in the bed, and predictably, Peeta’s arms are quick to ease her down. He woke up immediately, then, once again. It makes her feel guilty to think about, but it doesn’t stop her from melting into his touch, struggling all the while to regain her breathing.

“Which one was it?” he whispers gently, once she’s calmed down enough to speak. Katniss shirks under the covers. She’s never had this dream with him here before, and doesn’t know how to explain it to him. It’s a simple dream, on the surface, like all her other dreams, but there’s a lot more bubbling underneath.

“Nothing,” she whispers back, “It was nothing, I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.” Katniss is lying with her back pressed into his outline, so they are facing the same wall, but she moves a hand back to briefly stroke his cheek, hoping this will be enough to soothe his fretting. She is too tired to talk about this tonight…or is it that she is too afraid to admit to him what she still hasn’t truly admitted to herself?

Of course, Peeta is nothing but persistent. Damn him. “Katniss,” he urges, his voice full of concern. She can feel him half sit up, leaning on an elbow to look down on her. There is no choice but to turn to face him and start talking.

“It’s okay, really. It wasn’t even about the Games, just my dad,” she begins, still trying to play the whole thing off as no big deal.

“You’re a terrible liar, Katniss,” he reminds her.

She half sits up as well. His blue eyes still seem piercing, even under this veil of darkness. “It’s an old nightmare,” she says at last, “I’ve had them even before the Games.” She looks quickly away, feeling suddenly ashamed. Peeta’s fingers collide with her own beneath the blanket, offering her a slight squeeze as encouragement.

“It’s okay, Katniss,” he says aloud, to fill the gap where she continues to be silent. “I had mine before the Games, too. Anyone growing up like us, in a place like this, would. It’s okay.” Her head shoots up then and finds that his eyes have gone momentarily far away, like that night they walked back to their houses after the Victory Tour. She squeezes his hand to bring him back, but even when he does, he doesn’t elaborate. “It was about him dying?” he asks, deflecting the conversation back her way. _Oh, yes,_ she thinks, even though she’s dying to know what a younger Peeta was dreaming about years before the Games, _we were still talking about me._

“Yes,” she admits. “After—After the accident, I used to dream it all the time. It starts with him getting in the lift at the mines and it takes him down. My mom is standing there holding mine and Prim’s hands, and we watch him disappear. It doesn’t make any sense, because when it actually happened my sister and I weren’t there, we were still at school…. Anyway, then the earth starts shaking, and I start yelling at him to run. Prim joins in too, and it’s almost like if we were just a _little_ louder, he’d hear us and be able to escape—but my mom won’t yell out, won’t help us. She just stands there, petrified and silent.” _Weak,_ she thinks, though this part is too cruel to say aloud. “It’s stupid,” she adds, quickly, “It’s nothing like it happened in real life. Prim and I weren’t even there. And of course he couldn’t escape.”

Peeta’s face, when she’s worked herself up to glancing at it, looks immensely sad, like it has lived a thousand tragic lives, but it is not pitying. This is one of the best parts about Peeta Mellark: he never pities her. What he feels is always far more genuine than that.

Obviously, Peeta must know that her mother hasn’t always been exactly _present_. He tossed her that bread, after all, in the weeks after the real explosion. He knew she was starving. And he knew, after that, that she was constantly hunting, selling her squirrels to his father for survival. She has never told anyone openly all the details about her mother, except for Gale, always afraid that anyone else would report her to community home and have her and Prim taken away. But looking at him now, she knows she doesn’t have to tell Peeta explicitly. He already knows. Has always known.

“Katniss,” he begins, a little tentatively, his voice impossibly soft, “You’re not your mother.”

So he does know, then. That is enough confirmation. He knows the fear that has been plaguing her for days, the reason this old nightmare has crept up again, now of all times. The mine dream used to haunt her because she couldn’t save her father. Now what stands out most, the part that lingers in her mind long after waking, is not the shaking earth or the rising flames or her father’s disappearing face in the lift, but her mother’s inability to yell out _run_. She thinks, then, of her mother before, her fleeting remembrance of a lively woman who did her best with nothing, who tirelessly cut up the nice fabric of her town dresses so that she and Prim might have something nice to wear on the first day of school. The woman who hummed as she cooked, whose face always lit up in unabashed adoration whenever her husband brought home a rabbit shot right through the eye. The woman who never missed a chance to stand at the edge of the mines and wait to greet her lover at the end of the day. Then Katniss thinks of what that kind of love cost her.

_Everything._

“Look at me,” Peeta whispers, and she does. “You’re not her.”

That’s when she kisses him.


	6. Chapter 6

When it comes to kissing Peeta Mellark, the most important and foremost priority is separating out the fake kisses from the real ones. Oh, they have had plenty of experience with kissing, the two of them…but only a few hold any weight. Only a few really count—less than she can number on one hand.

Of these, even fewer have been initiated by her.

Only one has happened without a camera there to film it.

This one.

Katniss can’t stop thinking about it. It is unfair to compare kissing Peeta to kissing Gale, but she does it anyway. With Gale she has only the one kiss to go off, which puts him at an obvious disadvantage. Also, she did not initiate the kiss, which is disadvantage number two. Even with these flaws in mind, she knows the two kisses don’t compare. They can’t. Gale’s kiss had taken her by surprise, thrown her off so that she couldn’t really process it at the time. What she remembers most about it, now, are his hands, scratchy against her face, already so calloused from years of setting snares.

_Ensnared._ That was how she felt at the time. Ensnared by him. Caught off guard, caught up in something before she knew she was in it; the unsuspecting prey to one of his traps. Of course, in some recess of her mind, she had always known that her and Gale wouldn’t remain _just friends_ forever. Even the District had known it. It was written in the glares sent Katniss’ way by the other girls in her class, mooning after Gale and disdained that _she_ of all people was allowed to be near him. It was in the suggestive ways in which Ripper and Greasy Sae would sometimes wink at them whenever they sold their game at the Hob. There had never been a time when Katniss wanted to marry—him or _anybody_ —but one thing had always been obvious to anyone with eyes: Gale was hers, and she was his. They were linked together so intrinsically that the idea of anyone else breaking up their little unit was unimaginable. It had never even crossed her mind. Gale was the older one. Undeniably attractive, brilliant, always much more magnetic than she. He could have had lots of girlfriends over the years—but he’d never had one, at least not one that stuck. Since the day she stumbled into his life somewhere out amongst the trees, the two of them had curved in towards one another naturally, like a stem bending towards its sunlight, towards the sustenance that will keep it alive. From the time she was twelve, Gale was the only person who knew all of her secrets.

But that isn’t true anymore. Now there are all kinds of things she doesn’t tell Gale— _can’t_ tell him—all kinds of experiences he won’t ever share, instances he will never understand, simply because he wasn’t there. It still feels like a betrayal, this new side of her that she can’t reconcile with him. She knows, logically, that it isn’t her fault that Prim was reaped. Still, when did Peeta replace him as her confidant? Was it as far back as the arena? Did she know, even as they huddled together in that cave, that there would be no going back now that they were in the middle? Somewhere along the way, Gale fell unreachably far back, and Peeta became her new source of sunlight, the only way forward.

Katniss hates herself even as she thinks it, but she can’t help but wonder if Gale already knows. Maybe he felt it too, when they kissed. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t tried to do it again.

If Caesar Flickerman were to materialize this very moment and wiz her onstage to ask her whom she considers her best friend, the answer, if she voiced it truthfully, would still require not a lick of thought: Gale Hawthorne. But it’s different between them, in this new world she finds herself in where seemingly everything has been irreversibly changed. Except, realistically, she knows that it’s not the world that changed when she was in the arena, but her. Now she is the girl who will hurry her mother and Prim to their beds just to lengthen the minutes she and Peeta will have in the night. Now she is the girl who can kiss the boy with the bread and know instantly that she wants to kiss him again.

She’s only felt this way once before, and it wasn’t with Gale. It was that morning in the cave, after she’d gotten Peeta his medicine, when they’d kissed, for the first time, with clear heads. She felt that same warmth that she feels rising through her now, then. Peeta is in a category in her brain that she can’t fully identity. _Lover_ is too tainted, too mixed up with the lies and the acts. _Friend_ isn’t quite right, either. Gale is her friend. Peeta is somewhere in between, or maybe beyond…off in a place all his own in her mind.

He kisses her back, and it feels, for the first time, like she actually is the girl on fire. _Burning, burning, burning._

When they eventually break away, though, he doesn’t indulge her in a follow up kiss, even though he must know she would happily oblige. Somewhere beneath the instant gratification of her lips on his, beneath the longing for _more_ —more kisses, more touching, more of his bare skin, she doesn’t quite know which—there is the burgeoning panic of what this all means, how it could be used against them. Katniss selfishly pushes this aside. She deserves, she thinks, that much, at least for a night. But in her brief hesitation, Peeta has drawn away. “Go back to sleep,” he mutters, pulling her back down with him onto the pillows. And there’s nothing left to do but follow his instruction.

She sleeps undisturbed for the rest of the night, and when she awakes to the sun peaking in through her open window, Peeta is already gone.

Prim is particularly bouncy this morning, which is unfortunate because it highlights how entirely contrary Katniss seems when set against the cheerful candor of her little sister. Her own stupor is enough for her mother to ask, “Are you feeling all right dear?” as they sit around the breakfast table, anyway.

“Yes,” Katniss lies, though her mind is swarming more than a tracker jacker hive with unbidden thoughts. “It’s Sunday isn’t it?” she grits out. Without work, when there’s nothing to do with the hours but sit in a much too large house, the days have a strange way of blurring together.

“Yes,” Prim chirps, “And Mom says I can come along on her appointments today. Right Mom?” Prim has been spending more and more of her weekends accompanying their mother to houses in the Seam to help administer to the pregnant and the sick. She has the healer’s knack, their mother says appreciatively. Usually it makes Katniss beam with pride. Today she is too distracted to take much notice.

“I think I might go and see Gale,” she announces crisply, folding her napkin and pushing her mostly full plate toward Prim to finish off.

Her mother raises her eyebrows. So it _has_ been obvious that she’s been avoiding him. Great.

Katniss stops at the old house first, to quickly change into her familiar leather boots and slip on her father’s old jacket. Then, for the first time in weeks, she steps under the fence with the intention of going to find Gale.

Only, he isn’t anyone along their usual path, and he isn’t at the traps, many of which still hold today’s fresh game. She’s the one who set them, since Gale was of course in the mines, so the work isn’t as clean as when Gale’s masterful hands are behind them, but she’s impressed by their haul all the same. Katniss is just beginning to wonder if he isn’t coming today at all when she spots him in their old spot, sitting with his back towards her against the gnarled bark of a tree, staring out across the endless valley. When Katniss calls out to him to make herself known, he doesn’t even flinch. Maybe she isn’t as quiet in her woods as she once was. Or maybe he just knows her too well to be alarmed.

“Hey, Catnip,” he greets. Then, never one to beat around the bush, “I was starting to think I’d never see you again.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she means it. “I didn’t meanto ignore you.” Then, because she’s trying to be honest here, she adds, “Well, not for this long. I just—it’s like I don’t know what to say to you anymore.” She falls into the grass beside him.

“…Because of the kiss,” Gale finishes, turning to her as though daring her to disagree. _There it is._ Well, it had to come up sometime.

“Not _just_ that,”

“Well it’s like I said, I had to do it, just once. I love you, Katniss.” Now _she’s_ the one flinching. Apparently he didn’t feel the same as her about that kiss, after all.

“I think you love someone who’s not here anymore, Gale,” she says tentatively, thinking hard about what she prepared herself to say that morning, “Whoever I was before…it’s different now. The Games made sure of that.” Gale is pulling tufts of grass out of the dirt, the back of his neck bright red with anger. Katniss takes a deep breath and plows on, “You don’t know what it’s like in the arena…you—well, you can’t know, can you?” She’s trying to be gentle but has to doubt her own success when Gale’s head whips around, furious.

“Because you don’t tell me Katniss!” he hisses. “You act like nobody else can understand, but you don’t even try!”

“Gale, they’re going to send me back to the Capital,” she says hurriedly, not wanting to take a breath in case she were to lose her nerve in the time that it took. She didn’t mean to tell him this so bluntly, but…well, it’s out there now. “It’s never going to be over for me,” she presses, urging him to understand, _please_ Gale, just understand, “But you can still have a life. A _good_ life, with someone else.”

“Good? _Good._ ” The fight has suddenly gone out of his voice. He lets out a hollow laugh, one that sounds warped and so unlike his own. After only a few months in the mines, he already seems a million years older. Around his hairline she can make out a thin layer of lingering soot. It’s a common proverb in Twelve that if you go down to the mines even once, you’ll never be clean again. “Things will never be good here, Katniss. How can you of all people not know that?”

“I do know it,” she snaps in return, beginning to regret even coming here, “I do know it, Gale. You’re not the one who’s going to be shipped off to the Capital every year—”

“You won’t have to be a mentor for long, Katniss. The revolution _is_ coming; I can feel it. All of us in the mines can. You’ve fired them up, Katniss. Everyone’s behind you. We want to _fight_.”

Katniss wants to scream at him. _I don’t want anyone behind me!_ How does he not get it? She thinks of the stench of blood mixed with Snow’s breath and the nauseating sweetness of the rose on his lapel, and has the sudden urge to heave. They can’t win against the Capitol. They won’t survive it. _You’ll die,_ she thinks frantically.

Only when Gale says, “Death is better than this,” does she realize she’s said the last part aloud.

“We were wrong about Finnick,” is all she can think to say in response. Gale’s face wrinkles in confusion.

“What? That guy with the trident?”

“Snow sells him,” Katniss continues bluntly. “When we see him on TV, on the arm of some Capitol girl during every Games, it’s not because he wants to be there it’s because he’s been Sold. To. Her.” There are tears in her eyes now, and it’s what has made Gale fall silent at last. “That’s what Snow’s going to do to me, and Peeta too. As punishment for what I did in the Games.” Gale’s eyes have become so rage-filled by now that Katniss has to look away. “No one hates the Capitol more than I do. No one. I know you want a revolution, but we aren’t the ones in control here _,_ Gale. Snow is already watching you, he’ll kill you in a second at the slightest provocation, and there will be absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. So it’s this life or nothing.”

“This is no life, Katniss,” Gales says, though he’s finally more subdued about it. With Gale, that’s at least a start.

“What about your family’s lives then?” Katniss presses. “What about Vick and Rory and Posy? Don’t think for a moment they’re not on Snow’s list, too. I didn’t volunteer to take Prim’s place at the reaping just so they could kill her a year later, along with everyone else I care about!”

Gale closes his eyes. She can see his breath swirling clearly in the air. The snow may have all melted but the air can still seem frigid, even now. “So you’re going then, to the Capitol. To let him sell you off to whatever bastard with pay the most.” Gale says it softly, mildly. It still comes out like an accusation.

Well, he might not forgive her, but she knows that if she doesn’t do this and any one of them die, she’ll never forgive herself. “Yes. I’m going.” _What alternative is there?_

“And me? What am I supposed to do?”

“Look after yourself.” She stands up and wipes her hands against her pants, then holds out a hand to help him stand. They stare at one another for an extended moment. Gale definitely seems to have cooled, because she can almost see the fire flow out of him and the sadness replace it. Then something shifts, and he starts to walk back towards his traps. _He does understand then,_ she thinks. _He knows there’s no going back._ “We should teach Rory the traps,” she says steadily, “So he can set them while you’re in the mines once I’m not around to do it.”

Gale nods his agreement and bends down to untangle the first dish for his family’s dinner. It’s a small rabbit, whose tiny white-grey body is folded over in the snare like a ragdoll.

It’s early afternoon by the time they climb back under the fence, both their bags heavy with Gale’s game haul. Katniss glances around nervously for any sign of the peacekeepers. It’s reckless, borderline idiotic, to be out at all now, let alone this late. By this hour, all the new peacekeepers will be on patrol throughout District Twelve, just looking for trouble; she can’t be caught trying to trade illegal meat. It’s past time to get home.

She accompanies Gale as far as the edge of the Seam, then shrugs her game bag from her shoulder and passes it over. To add to their snare kills, the two of them managed to shoot a wild turkey before they left the woods. It’s an impressive haul, and the Hawthorne’s will be feasting well tonight because of it. “Be careful trading today,” Katniss says as she hands over her share. Gale accepts, for once, without protest. “Sae told me yesterday they’ve been amping up the raids even more this week.”

Gale salutes her in acknowledgement of the warning, then veers the subject back to dangerous territory. “Look, you’ll tell me before you go, won’t you?”

“Of course I will.”

“All right, then. I’ll see you, Catnip.” He turns and disappears around the bend and into the Seam.

Katniss sighs as she walks away. It’s not a peace, exactly, but it’s at least some sort of tentative truce. Given the circumstances, it’s probably the best she could have hoped for. At least he doesn’t seem like he’s going to do something crazy, and at least telling him is out of the way. He will watch over Prim when she’s gone. That much she’s certain of.

On the return home, she stops at Haymitch’s, hoping to find Peeta there, but it’s just their mentor today. He’s for once not drinking, instead standing precariously on a stepstool fitting in a new telephone to the port in the wall where his old one once was. Haymitch ripped it out years ago, and from Katniss’ own experience with the phone in her house, she can’t blame him. No one in Twelve has a telephone, which means the only people who ever call are from the Capitol. So far she’s gotten the occasional, though very welcome, call from Cinna, and an unwelcome, but unfortunately much more prevalent influx of Capitol tripe. Before the Victory Tour, her prep team called her near daily with reminders: _Remember to shave your legs, Katniss!_ And _If you don’t continue to pluck them, your eyebrows will grow right back in, and won’t that be a horror!_ And _Whatever you do, don’t let_ anyone _touch your hair!_ It was exhausting.

“Shouldn’t you get someone to help you with that?” Katniss asks nonchalantly, leaning again the kitchen counter and allowing herself a few minutes to watch him struggle. Haymitch grunts moodily in response. Well, at least his house is looking a bit cleaner. When she first saw it, she was afraid she’d choke on twenty-four years’ worth of dust. Now the surfaces are cluttered, but without the usual layer of grime. Perhaps Peeta’s reform efforts are working after all.

She leaves him to it. Across the way, her own house is empty. Prim and her mother have already gone out on their appointments, then. Without them there creating noise, the house seems even more foreign than usual. Katniss sweeps the floors and spends half an hour futilely shuffling around her outfits in her closet, and soon finds herself staring out one of her front windows, looking out at the plaza for any signs of Peeta. None of the lights seem to be on in his house. He must have gone to the visit the bakery today, or maybe to meet up with some of his old town friends. Knowing Peeta, they’re probably all still in touch.

Sighing, Katniss goes back downstairs into the living room with its armchairs and leather couches, and falls instantly into the closest seat, entirely out of ideas on how to keep herself preoccupied. She hates that she wasn’t able to talk to Peeta this morning, because now it means she’s going to spend the remainder of the night thinking about him and what he might have thought of that kiss. Surely he’s happy about it, right? Even after puzzling over it for fifteen minutes she hasn’t thought of any reasons why he wouldn’t be. From the fond way he looks at her, even lately, in the weeks when she was barely talking to him, she can’t imagine that he’s stopped caring for her. Also, it’s not like the kiss was one-sided. He was certainly returning it with vigor, his tongue pushing between her lips and briefly fighting for dominance with her own before he pulled away and left her aching. Anyway, there’s no point in worrying over it, she reminds herself firmly. She’ll just have to wait until he comes over tonight and he tells her himself. Or, better yet, until he kisses her again. The thought sends a brief, girlish flutter through her chest. 

Still…for the first few hours after Prim and her mother return from a particularly trying appointment during which an elderly man passed away from pneumonia, and long after each of them has collapsed into their respective beds, Katniss is forced to question whether Peeta is coming at all. It’s been hours since her family went to bed, and there is still no sign of Peeta. She’s just wondering if she shouldn’t go check on him when she hears the familiar rap on her door.

He knocks twice to let her know it’s him and then carefully slips into the room.   
  


“Hi,” she says, flicking back to on the night lamp she’d finally turned off after accepting he wasn’t coming. She’s so relieved to see him that any thought of being mad at him evaporates. What’s the use, when they already have so little time? Peeta doesn’t say anything until he’s shuffled over to the bed and is sitting on the edge with his back to her, fiddling with his leg. It’s a relief to see him taking it off. He never used to on the train, claiming that it didn’t bother him, and besides, he liked to be prepared to get up at any moment. The second part was probably true enough, given the instincts that the Games drilled into both of them, but she never bought into the first. After casually bringing it up to her mother one day and hearing a medic’s perspective on the matter, she’s started insisting that Peeta remove it whenever he climbs into her bed. Now he does so without her begging him to. He still leaves the sleeve and all those socks on to cover up his stump, which he refuses to let her see, but still. It gives her a certain level of satisfaction, to know that her own stubbornness finally won out over his.

“Sorry I took so long,” he says as he messes with the straps. Katniss watches him, letting herself unabashedly soak him in, not even caring if he catches her staring. His broad back, the stretch of his cotton shirt over his shoulders, the strength of his arms. His blonde curls have gotten longer as of late, she’s noticed, so that they hang in enticing tendrils to his chin. Maybe his prep team has been calling him with instructions, too. The thought, for whatever reason, makes her laugh out loud.

Peeta turns to her, his face breaking into a full-fledged smile. “What’s so funny?” he says, still grinning. It’s so rare to see her laughing, after all.   
  


“It’s stupid,” she says, but she tells him anyway, and laughs more when he does a striking imitation of the high-pitched voice of his hairstylist, Clio, in return.

“It was grow it out or let them dye it emerald green,” Peeta jokes. “I think you’ll agree I chose the better of the two options.”

As soon as he’s got the leg off and rested it along the side table, Katniss grabs his hand, pulling him towards her, feeling unusually giddy and girlish, two emotions that are so far removed from the name Katniss Everdeen that it makes her want to laugh all over again. It’s no matter—she’s too preoccupied with getting him in her arms to care. “Just come here and kis—” She halts mid-sentence. Grabs for his sleeve.

“Katniss, don’t—” Peeta says, all trace of playfulness instantly washed away. But it’s too late, she’s already peeling back his sleeve, her suspicions meeting instant confirmation at what she finds there. Two long but narrow bruises, running the length of Peeta’s forearm, overlapping at one end. There’s an even narrower, thin red line running through the center of each of these marks, where the skin has broken open and the blood’s crusted over. Around them, the skin is black and blue. Like someone’s hit him with something long, more than once… _hard._

“Peeta, what is this?”

“It’s nothing,” he insists, but his eyes say otherwise, and he can tell she knows it, too. “I went over to my parents’ for dinner,” he concedes, pulling his arm from her grasp and hastily shoving down his sleeve.

Katniss’ face falls. She thinks of a few day’s ago, when she caught a particularly meaty squirrel right through its eye and dropped it off to the smiling, cheerful baker as a treat. She decides then she hates him, this man who shares Peeta looks and demeanor, but apparently not his heart…a man who lets his wife beat their son behind closed doors.

Peeta must recognize the anger brewing in her, because he says, “It’s not that bad, trust me.” He even _laughs,_ though it’s a ghost of the full-bellied one he let out a few minutes ago. This time it’s forced, like he’s doing it for invisible cameras. “I’ve had a lot worse, haven’t I?” he gestures towards his leg.

“That’s different,” Katniss snaps. Peeta only shrugs.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle. I promise. Now about that kiss…” He pulls her to him and her next rebuttal dies on her lips. Even though Katniss knows she’ll regret letting the subject go this easily, she gives in to him almost instantly, moving her lips against his own, tentatively working his mouth open with her tongue, trying out the taste of him.

At some point, the kisses give way to sleep…at least for Peeta. Katniss’ head is still swimming with all the events of the day. Her fight with Gale, their fruitful hunting trip, the mangled bruises Peeta’s mother left on his pale arm, the softness of his kisses. She is sitting up in bed now, stroking his hair like he so often does for her. As far as she can tell, his sleep doesn’t seem at all restless tonight. _Good,_ she thinks, _that’s something good._

She can’t help but wonder what he said to his mother to get her to hit him at the dinner table. And she can’t stop thinking about Peeta’s feeble defenses when she confronted him also: _I’ve had worse._ There's the Games, obviously. But even though he’d pointed to his leg she could tell that wasn’t what he was thinking about as he’d said it, or at least not only that.

Katniss has a distinct memory, so clear she’s surprised she remembers it with such vividness, of all those years ago, when he tossed her that bread. The sound of the slap. The bruise blooming out around his eye. And how she’d heard him, the week after at school, telling all of the teachers that he’d accidentally rammed into the bedpost whilst he and his brother Rye were practicing their wrestling maneuvers on their bedroom floor. Her hand tightens in his hair, stopping its ministrations and coming to rest lifelessly amongst the curls.

A horrible thought crosses her mind, one that she knows will keep her up for the remainder of this already sleepless night. Before long they will both be in the Capitol, and then it will be some strange Capitol woman running her hand through his hair in a different, foreign bed. Suddenly cold, she crawls beneath the covers and throws her limbs around Peeta’s sleeping form, as if to claim him. If only she could yell in the face of this shadowy Capitol woman, _you can’t have him._ If only she could go to his mother, his father, straight to President Snow and anyone else who’s ever torn at the kindness and sweetness of Peeta Mellark and scream, _he’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've returned! As always, thank you to everyone who's left me feedback or kudos. Apologizes for the wait on this one... between a full time job, being a bridesmaid in not one but two Covid weddings, real world news, and the surprise release of Taylor Swift's folklore album (which I've had on repeat since the night it dropped) I haven't had much time to spare. 
> 
> If anyone else happens to, like me, be obsessed with both Folklore and Everlark ...I was listening to Hoax on my ride home from work today and decided it's entirely a Peeta/Katniss song. I mean... "stood on the cliffside screaming give me a reason / your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in" "don't want no other shade of blue but you / no other sadness in the world would do" andddd "I am ash from your fire"!!!! Anyway....


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